


Time After Time

by fancylances



Series: Greatest Hits [1]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Temporary Character Death, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark has PTSD, definitely alternate Avengers 4, kinda alternate Infinity War
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-07
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-05-19 04:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 47,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14866620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fancylances/pseuds/fancylances
Summary: Tony Stark is unstuck in time. Stephen Strange might just be the only person in the universe qualified enough to help.





	1. first iterations

Stephen dropped the book he’d been holding in one hand when a scream ripped through the still air of the Sanctum. Wong’s sandwich hit the plate, and both of their heads snapped up at the same time.

“Always at lunchtime,” Wong murmured, just out of earshot as Stephen was already out of his chair and running—the cloak following after.

The lights in the artifact room winked in and out, shuddering with the weight of the disturbance in the center of the room. Stephen felt the cloak clasp onto his shoulders at the same time Wong skidded to a halt beside him, shields already raised.

The distortion shuddered at the edges like an open, throbbing wound in space. This was no portal conjured by a sling ring, or any spell that Stephen knew—and glancing sideways at his companion confirmed that it wasn’t something that Wong recognized either. The disturbance swirled outward from the center, and widened just enough for a figure to come stumbling out of it. 

Whoever—whatever—it was, it was human enough in stature—though it appeared to be covered in armor that had been chipped away through battle. More interestingly, one arm was adorned by a golden, beaten gauntlet, set with six colorful stones whose light seemed to burn into him. One in particular turned his stomach at the very sight of it. The green stone set at the thumb of the gauntlet was, without a sliver of doubt, the same stone set into the Eye of Agamotto. Glowing as if burning.

Something was _horribly_ wrong.

The figure collapsed in the center of the hall, trailing either steam or smoke (likely the latter from the smell of burning hair) as he tumbled from his knees to flat on his face. Regardless, Wong’s shields didn’t waver. The newcomer was still alive, by the tremors in his arms. And after only a moment, the arm with the gauntlet attached rose just enough to act as leverage to pull the figure’s face from the floor.

A face that, though bloody and bruised, was unmistakable. 

What in all the realms was Tony Stark doing in the Sanctum Sanctorum, and with all of the Infinity Stones?

Stephen and Wong stood, blankly staring and still across the room.

Tony’s eyes tried to focus twice, and blinking only brought tears to cling to his lashes. Finally, after agonizing seconds, his mouth opened and he heaved in a breath.

“Help,” was all he could manage.

Stephen broke formation first. He came to the ground just in time to keep Tony from planting his face in the floorboards a second time, a hand gripping firmly at Tony’s arm.

“Stark,” Stephen grumbled, brows lowering into somewhere between annoyance and concern. “My name is Stephen Strange, I’m a doctor. Tell me what happened, and,” he added with a grunt as he helped Tony to his feet, “we can talk about the Infinity Stones later.”

Tony complied with the movement, but against a loud groan and the nearly audible gritting of his teeth. “Jesus, I know you’re a doctor, Strange. Why d’you think I—”

The fingers on the gauntlet clamped suddenly into a fist, and the time stone blazed to life in its setting. The clock in the far hall began to chime, striking two.

“Oh, _shit_ ,” Tony moaned. He clamped his eyes shut, and with a shout of pain and a flash of green light, he was gone again. His hands empty, Stephen pitched forward—and would have hit the ground if not for the cloak’s quick reaction.

Wong had come to his side by the time Stephen had regained his footing and his dignity, and his shields bled away as they listened and waited for any sign that this was an isolated incident.

“Wong,” Stephen said after a drawn-out moment. “Tell me I didn’t just imagine one of the Avengers appearing in the Sanctum.”

“If you did,” Wong answered, dropping his shoulders into a shrug, “then so did I.” His gaze was deadly serious when their eyes met again. “You saw the stones?”

“All of them,” Stephen growled. His fingers pressed worriedly to the Eye, but even without looking he knew that the stone was still inside. “What the hell was that?”

“Not good,” Wong answered vaguely, and he turned back to where he had left his sandwich (just missing the pronounced rolling of Stephen’s eyes). “And I have a feeling,” he said over one shoulder, “this won’t be the last time we see Mister Stark.”

Stephen sighed loudly through his nose, and the collar of the cloak rustled away from his impatient breath.

After battling through an agonizing half-hour phone call with Stark’s head of security, a man who sounded decidedly _not_ happy to have someone questioning Mister Stark’s whereabouts, Stephen was reassured for the third time that the man in question wasn’t out defending the Earth at the moment. He was in absolutely no danger from the mojito he was drinking on the beach with his fiancee in Bali.

And he had nearly gone through the motions to open the Eye and turn back time just a little bit—just to get more information out of Stark before he disappeared—when he could almost literally feel Wong’s eyes burning into the back of his skull.

“Stephen,” Wong grumbled, his voice exceptionally good at sounding very loud despite barely being in the same room. “Do you think it would be a good idea to bring even more of a tangle to this timeline?”

Stephen dropped his hands uselessly to his side. “What are we supposed to do? Wait to see if it happens again?”

“Be vigilant,” Wong said firmly. He stood and clapped Stephen on the shoulder as he passed. “We can take shifts.”

+++

The cloak had taken Stephen to a high shelf, where he was suspended, browsing the books. The lights flickered. His eyes snapped to the clock on the wall—ten minutes before it would strike two in the afternoon. The cloak lowered him back to the ground as if on cue, and with long-legged strides, he was in the artifact room in a heartbeat.

He was there in time to keep Tony from hitting the floor at all.

There was no swirling portal this time, only the flash of green and the sudden appearance of a billionaire in the Sanctum. No momentum to speak of behind Tony’s body besides buckling of his knees. Interesting.

“Stark,” Stephen said, wrenching Tony up to look him in the face—he saw pain there, mostly, but also panic and confusion. “My name is Stephen Strange—”

“I know,” Tony coughed. “I know, we already did this part. Skip to… skip to the part with you actually helping me.”

Stephen blinked, nonplussed. The same time as yesterday, but not a perfect loop.

“C’mon, Doc,” Tony breathed (he looked so tired, fighting pain and exhaustion), “I thought you were good at this stuff.”

“You’re in a non-repeating recursion,” Stephen said, himself fighting with his disbelief. “You have eight minutes, if yesterday is anything to go on.”

“Yesterday?” Tony wheezed, leaning heavily into Stephen’s support. “It _just_ happened.”

“Just happened to _you_. Focus, Stark. You’ve acquired more dangerous jewelry than a thief in the Tower of London. If you can’t control those stones—”

“That’s why I’m _here_ and not chilling on a beach—”

“In Bali?” Stephen all but growled. He pushed Tony to arm’s length; to the man’s credit, he stood on his own. “Tell me what happened, and maybe we can get you fixed up enough to hold yourself upright.”

“Right,” Tony swallowed, nodding painfully. “Big fight with the big guy, high noon stand-off kind of thing. I finally get my hands on—” He waved the hand with the gauntlet. “—this tacky piece of hardware, and I can’t…” Tony bit off his sentence, chewed heavily on his words in a way that almost disguised his discomfort. “It’s a lot to handle at once. I knew you were the guy when it comes to cosmic evil rocks, so I went back—”

“Back.” The word was like lead in Stephen’s throat. “Stark, back from _when_?”

“I don’t know, a year? Couple of months? Hard to tell when it’s the end of the world.”

“Five minutes.” Stephen pinched the bridge of his nose hard enough to make his knuckles go white and his fingers shake. “How can you be so _annoying_ when you’re bleeding out? Nevermind,” he snapped as Tony opened his mouth to answer, “just tell me where you’re hurt and I’ll have suture and gauze ready for your next appearance.”

Tony’s armor seemed to melt away—all aside from the gauntlet—into the arc reactor in the middle of his chest. He looked much smaller without it, and his injuries were much clearer. An old stab wound between the ribs, angry lacerations all over his exposed forearm, bruises purple and yellow near the windpipe. The most immediate danger (aside from the potential nuclear threat of the gauntlet) was the tear clear from shoulder nearly to navel, through the clothes and deep into the flesh. Coagulated just enough to keep him from gushing all over the Sanctum’s nice hardwood.

“Keep your hand pressed to your stomach,” Stephen instructed. The clock in the hall began to chime two, and he rushed out the next words: “Don’t breathe too deeply and don’t use the stones, Stark!”

And with a flash of green light, he was alone again.

Stephen breathed out and slumped backwards into the cloak, who cradled his body like a cushion in midair. Just twenty-four hours until Iron Man reappeared, bleeding and irritating, for an impromptu life-saving. Just perfect.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is my first shot at writing in the MCU. god, I hope I get these guys right. If there are any blatant errors or something horribly OOC pleeease don't hesitate in telling me about it. Thank you so much for reading, hopefully I can get updates rolling quickly on this one.


	2. projection precision

The moment that Tony appeared, Stephen began his work without a word. The surgical scissors made short work of Tony’s ruined shirt, and the slivers of it hung uselessly off his shoulders

“Woah,” Tony tried to shout, though the word caught heavily in his chest. “Take me to dinner first, Doc.”

“Yesterday,” Stephen began, ignoring protestation to slosh a sterile towel in steaming, soapy water, “you told me that what’s a day apart for me is almost instantaneous for you.”

“Yeah,” Tony began, but his words dribbled into harsh nonsense when Stephen moved in to clean the wound across Tony’s torso.

“You’ll thank me when you don’t end up with an infection,” Stephen snapped. 

His eyes lingered on the gauntlet—dented and damaged, but still shining gold almost in defiance—before they locked back on Tony’s face. Tony had seen the movement, and there was a sudden change in his face. Apprehension, a sudden wariness that made Tony pull just a hair back from him.

“I’m not going to steal it,” Stephen grumbled, continuing the work of cleaning Tony’s wound. “I was just going to suggest that you don’t try to take it off.”

Tony laughed, a derisive little thing that barely made his chest move. “You’re the boss of me, now?”

Stephen took a long breath. “You’re stuck. Sure, taking the gauntlet off might stop the loop altogether and this is all a huge waste of time. Or…”

“Or…” Tony goaded, though his apprehension seemed to wash away just as easily as his blood.

“Or it could probably just as easily trap you in an endless ten minute loop for the rest of your life.” Distaste filled the cracks in Stephen’s sarcastic smile. “I think it’s better we deal with the demons we know, first.”

“Have you always had this flawless bedside manner?” Tony chirped. “Because, honestly, this is the calmest I’ve ever been. You’re a miracle worker.”

“Well,” Stephen said, reaching for the cart he’d wheeled up to the middle of the artifact room and returning with a syringe, “you’re going to love me in five minutes.”

Tony eyed the syringe suspiciously, to which Stephen only sighed like a long-suffering mother.

“It’s a local anesthetic. I can’t risk putting you completely under—there’s no telling what might happen to the stones if you’re completely unconscious. You’ll start feeling numb around the injection area in about five minutes. Maybe less; you’ve already lost a lot of blood.”

Without so much as a kind word, he had swabbed the site and stabbed the needle in. Tony grit his teeth and looked away.

Stephen pulled away, set the syringe aside, and inspected his would-be patient. It was an effective front he was putting up, but Stephen could see through the cracking veneer to see what Tony was trying to hide with that front. Pain, obviously, even with the anesthetic doing its job; fear and confusion (after all, it had barely been half an hour by Tony’s reckoning); but even under all of that was a lingering something that set a rigor to Tony’s every move.

There was a glancing, nervous, trembling something that Tony Stark was hiding. Something that had never shown its face on any of his TV spots, his interviews, his defense in front of the US government. Something happened. Something terrible. Something worse than nearly being cut in half.

“Want an autograph to go with that picture you’re taking with your brain, Doc?” Tony murmured, eyes still focused far away.

Stephen gathered his thoughts, settled his shoulders. “Listen, Stark, I don’t want to waste any more time getting you closed up. The sooner your injuries are out of the way, the sooner we can deal with the time stone. Tomorrow—as soon as you reappear, we’ll have a sterile table for you. Get on it, shut up, and don’t move.”

Tony tried to laugh, winced, and finally nodded. “Let’s get this over with.”

The anticipation practically seeped out of him, and as the noise of the clock striking the hour began to echo in the hall, Tony finally looked at him. Swallowed, nodded, and was gone.

+++

Wong lingered in the artifact room, hands clasped behind his back. Everything about his posture read apprehension, maybe even disdain. He was clearly not enamoured to the fact that they had ten minutes at a time to deal with whatever Tony Stark had done, and maybe not completely sold on the idea of not just taking the gauntlet from him.

“I don’t particularly like him, either,” Stephen said aloud, and at least Wong had the courtesy to look embarrassed for being so readable. “I’m not doing this because he’s Iron Man. Those stones could—”

“ _You’re_ lecturing _me_ about Infinity Stones now, Stephen?” Wong laughed. “Give a man one stone and look what it does to his ego,” he added with a further chuckle.

“If he dies in the loop—” Stephen powered through the prodding.

“Okay, Stephen, okay,” Wong assured him. “Just don’t ask me to assist on your surgery.”

“Always at lunchtime.” And even Stephen found himself laughing.

As the lights flickered, Wong took his cue and swept out of the room. Stephen took even breaths, pulled the gloves over his hands, and waited.

There was no dramatic pop or crashing of realities. Just a simple flash of green light, and Tony was back—standing in exactly the same spot he’d left him. The man blinked, and glanced directly behind him, where the table stood just where Stephen had said it would.

“This is really—” Tony tried to get in, but Stephen had already taken the stride to push Tony back toward the table.

“I’m pretty sure I remember ‘shut up’ being one of my instructions,” Stephen sighed. 

With stiff, painful movements, Tony crawled onto the table—on his back, the cut across his chest looking clean but angry. 

Stephen held his eyes closed, steadied his breathing. “Don’t let your heart rate jump too high, I don’t want you bleeding to death. This might get _strange_.”

He couldn’t see Tony’s face, but the noise the man made was somewhere between a wet cough and a weak “Nice.”

With a sharp exhale of his next breath, Stephen grew two more pairs of arms.

“WOAH!” Tony yelled, and the noises of his frightened scrambling echoed suddenly in two more pairs of ears.

“What did I say about your heart rate, Stark?” a second full Stephen Strange asked sternly. Second Stephen immediately began to work on the navel end of Tony’s wound. Third Stephen had swept succinctly to the other side of the space to thread his suture into Tony’s shoulder. Their movements seemed oddly quick, but precise. Stephen Prime watched both of him, his hand only trembling through the effort of keeping Tony as still as possible.

“I can control the tremors in my hands more effectively in my projections,” Stephen said calmly, watching both sets of his work. “And we need to get you closed as quickly as possible. _Stop squirming_.”

There was only the briefest silence, punctuated by the sound of four sets of lungs breathing.

“So,” Tony couldn’t help himself, “is this a popular trick with the ladies?”

“I have _several_ needles,” Stephen hissed. “Do you really want to piss off your doctor?”

“Sorry,” Tony grumbled, deflating under Stephen’s hands. “Kinda hoping humor keeps the pain in the back seat.”

“I have eight minutes to stitch you up,” Stephen murmured through a fog of intense focus. “Even with six hands, that’s tricky.”

Minutes ticked by, and slowly Stephen’s several fingers brought Tony’s flesh back into one piece.

“How long between the flashes?” Stephen asked quietly, his eyes on both sets of stitches.

“Huh?” 

“Between the ten minutes you appear here. How long are you bounced back to your normal time?”

“It’s not really _bouncing_ ,” Tony mused. “Maybe a couple seconds, but it’s… It’s like trying to jump a car, but the car’s not there.”

Stephen’s focus flicked just momentarily to Tony’s eyes. “So the ten minute spans are contiguous for you?”

“More or less,” Tony murmured with an unsure wave of a hand.

Stephens Two and Three met quite suddenly in the middle and tugged their sutures tight, knotted their ends together, and cut the excess. Not perfect, but good enough to hold for now.

“How does it feel?” all three of them said at once.

“Super creepy,” Tony uttered, grimacing upward at three identical pairs of eyes. All of them rolled at the same time.

“Can you move without tearing them?” Stephen Three asked.

“Think so,” Tony answered, and he twisted his upper body just slightly to test it.

“Good,” Stephen Prime sighed. And with that, both of the peripheral Stephens slammed back into their host at the same time, and with a gasp of shock and the wave of fatigue from the effort, the sorcerer stumbled blindly back from his patient.

“Doc—” he heard Tony call, half up from the table with his free hand tentatively reaching, just as the clock in the hall chimed two.

“Don’t pull your stitches, idiot,” Stephen managed to mutter before Tony disappeared completely.

He reeled for just a moment longer, a shaking hand across his eyes, before the cloak found him and steadied him on his feet.

"I'm okay," he grumbled, though trying to convince the very animate object of anything contrary to whatever it was thinking was just about as futile as getting Tony Stark to shut up for ten minutes at a time. A helpless chuckle seized Stephen's chest, and it didn't let go for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the encouragement! Keepin on truckin, I've got a metric pile of notes for this but whittling it down to the good stuff is gonna take a hot minute. And still not sure how long it'll be. But thanks for sticking around!


	3. semantics

The rest of the day, and long into the night, Stephen buried himself in words. He pored over rituals, badgered the Book of Cagliostro for any insights into the stone, any book that even hinted at some further elucidations on time. He fished deep in his pockets for loose change to give Wong for coffee—he was going to need it.

Half a latte later, he considered the Eye one more time. He’d stored it safely back at Kamar-Taj rather than risk exposing it to its duplicate every day at ten-to-two. How had Tony even acquired the stone in the first place, let alone set it in the gauntlet? He’d very briefly mentioned some “big guy” and getting his hands on the gauntlet, but that only made things harder to explain. 

“Don’t spend too much time prying into your future,” Wong said over one shoulder. He tapped the notes Stephen had scrawled on a scrap of paper (the Eye, the gauntlet, Tony Stark circled three times in red) with a scrutinizing smirk. “Knowledge of future events and attempts to stop them from happening, more often than not, bring them to pass despite your efforts.”

“I wouldn’t have given him the stone,” Stephen muttered quickly. He pushed the scrap of paper away, and it fluttered to the floor. “I wouldn’t just hand it over to _anyone_. And no one can take it off me, not without breaking some truly finicky spells. Wong—”

“Stephen,” Wong warned.

“You’re right,” Stephen sighed, and he ran a weary hand back through his hair as he sagged deep into the chair. “I don’t think sleep will clear anything up, but it might help me think straight.”

“Don’t lose sight of the present in all of this,” Wong said as Stephen rose to leave. “The present is where you’re needed.”

It rained until dawn, with the sound of droplets pelting his window waking him from a dream—everything had been the wrong color, Tony’s eyes had been green. Stephen lay still under the covers, listening to the grounding sound of the rain. Something real, something absolute. 

The clouds turned pink and red with the sunrise, and Stephen hoped that it wasn’t an omen.

+++

He had left the impromptu operating table in exactly the same spot as yesterday, just to be sure that his patient wouldn’t fall through thin air when he reappeared in three minutes. The lights had already started to flicker, and Stephen had started to pace. Some minutes felt longer than others, he mused.

“Doc!” Tony called loudly—again—the moment he flashed back into existence. His sudden movements almost brought him tumbling off the table regardless of Stephen’s precautions—but he righted himself before Stephen needed to swoop in. Tony swept his eyes all over, panic and breath half-catching in his throat when he asked: “You okay?”

Stephen blinked through his confusion. “Of course I’m okay.”

Tony’s breath slowed, but he didn’t sigh dramatically in relief. Rather, he took a moment to look supremely embarrassed. And even that morphed into something different, something not unlike that nervous _something_ Stephen had seen in him yesterday. He hid it again, effortlessly, like second nature.

“Right,” Tony said quietly, and he made a stiff move to push himself into a sitting position. “Right, of course you are. Not like a second ago you looked like you were gonna hit the floor.”

“It was yesterday, not a second ago,” Stephen muttered, taking steps into Tony’s space.

And he found Tony’s hand planted firmly—hard, insistent—in his chest, stopping him in his place. 

“It was to me,” Tony said darkly.

There was a tense moment, two pairs of eyes battling silently in a small space, and for that moment neither of them made a move to step down. But that moment passed. Stephen’s shoulders dropped (just slightly, but it was enough), and in response, Tony dropped his hand back to his side.

“I’m fine,” he reiterated, not as harsh the second time.

“Good,” Tony said after a moment, clearing his throat. “We’ve established that.”

Stephen took a long, hard breath to clear the air between them. 

“Here,” he said before Tony could make a move from the table. With a few quick movements, he had moved in to check the stitches (frowning at the imperfect but stable work).

“You realize you’ve managed to completely tangle the timeline,” Stephen said, leaning away, “by coming back to a time before we’ve met.”

“I didn’t really have much of a choice,” Tony replied, tentatively dabbing his own fingertips along the line of his stitches. “I mean, we didn’t meet ‘til the world was already ending.”

“ _You_ met _me_ at the end of the world. I met _you_ four days ago.”

Tony waved in a non committal way. “Semantics.”

“An important distinction,” Stephen corrected him. “You’re from my future, I’m from your past. That means that you know everything that I’ll eventually say, everything I’m going to do in that time that the world is ending. To you, it’s already happened—everything that brought you back here—but to me it’s a distant future.”

“I can—”

“Don’t. Really.” Stephen fixed him with a dangerous glare. “Take this.” And he pressed a large pill into Tony’s hand, followed by half a glass of water. “Just a painkiller, you’re going to need it.”

He waited to be sure that Tony took it. Regardless of the situation and how annoying his patient might be, he had still been a doctor at some point; some part of that would always be with him, including making sure that stubborn patients took their medicine.

“Call me in a week to get those taken out,” Stephen said, nodding to what would eventually be an excellent scar on Tony’s chest.

“So you _can_ be funny,” Tony called as Stephen turned away to the nearby desk—the one that was now covered in notes about the stone, about time, and about Tony Stark. “You just choose not to be.”

When Stephen turned back, he pressed a folded shirt into Tony’s open hand.

“Oh, I was gonna bill you,” Tony said, and he unfurled the offering. 

It was hideous—a plain white T-shirt with a faded picture of several kittens staring separately into the middle distance. I looked like it could have belonged on someone’s grandmother in 1993 (it very well might have, thrift shops tended not to ask many questions). 

“Thanks, I hate it.” He peered disbelievingly at Stephen. “Is the wizard’s guild on a tight budget, or something?”

“Short notice,” Stephen said. He crossed his arms. “Would you rather go shirtless?”

“I wouldn’t give you the pleasure, doctor,” Tony tried to laugh, and, failing that, tried to get the shirt on over his head. Instead, he gave a tight shout of pain and almost doubled over.

“I told you not to rip your stitches,” Stephen grumbled, and he moved back in to help Tony get the shirt over his head. It was at least a size too big, but it would help the stitches breathe.

“You said ‘idiot’, too. Good burn on the injured guy.”

“Do you ever stop wisecracking? More than ten minutes of you at a time must be infuriating.”

“And you were _so_ nice just a minute ago.”

“I’m not doing this out of the kindness of my heart, Stark,” Stephen growled, suddenly loud. Everything else seemed silent in comparison, as if he’d sucked all the noise from the room to make himself heard. “I’m doing this to keep the universe from possibly imploding around you. The stone is my top priority, and you’ve got the stone. You are a means to an end. Do I make myself clear?”

A dry laugh wracked through Tony’s chest. His eyes were anything but mirthful. “Yeah, that sounds more like the Doctor Strange I know.”

The clock sounded the hour. Stephen narrowed his eyes.

“Training starts tomorrow.”

Halfway through a rude gesture, Tony disappeared once again.

And, in a reply that wasn’t childish in the least, Stephen growled aloud, gripping his fingers around an invisible throat and throttling the life out of Tony Stark’s shadow.

+++

“And just how long were you at Kamar-Taj, Stephen?” Wong asked (he did like asking questions he knew the answers to).

Stephen threw up his hands. “I don’t have a better solution at this point. I learned to control the stone through study of the mystic arts, and eventually the rituals in the Book of Cagliostro. I don’t know what this gauntlet is, how it uses the stones, or if they can even be manipulated in the same way! I’m pulling at threads, Wong, and if you have _anything_ helpful you’d like to add, I would greatly appreciate the input.”

Wong chuckled. “This is a disaster.”

Stephen gestured sharply at the currently-empty artifact room. “ _He’s_ a disaster.”

“He’ll be a difficult student, I’m sure. And you’ll be a very difficult teacher.”

“Who’s side are you on?” Stephen grumbled.

“The side that helps Stark control the time stone, end the loop, and save the world.” Wong nodded succinctly, his point made, and sipped at his steaming tea before leaving Stephen alone in the study.

Stephen waited until Wong was out of earshot before he held his face in both palms and rumbled a sigh into them. Of course he was right. 

It wasn’t about _him_. It was about doing what needed to be done.

All these years, and he was still learning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I might be getting the hang of Tony. Maybe. I hope. Thanks again for all the love!


	4. ham and swiss

The rude gesture hung in the air between them as Tony reappeared in the artifact room, and the look on his face said that he was ready for more of whatever hand the sorcerer had dealt the last time they met.

He hadn’t stepped back into the middle of a fight. Stephen had surrounded him with books—some of them laid out on the nearby desk, some of them literally suspended in midair.

“It’s about time we talked about the Infinity Stones,” Stephen said, circling behind Tony and the books. “One in particular. The time stone, the green one on the thumb of that gauntlet—” He skirted carefully around the side of Tony that still bore the golden glove and its stones. “—is the reason you’re stuck with me for ten minutes at a time instead of saving the world.”

Tony’s mouth made a small dance on his face, flitting somewhere between annoyance and acknowledgement. “The universe, actually. Well, the world’s part of the universe, so I guess you’re kind of right.”

“We don’t have time for quips,” Stephen said, and the cloak pulled him effortlessly into the air with his next step, where he wrangled a book from its resting place. Once he’d secured it, he came back to the ground directly in front of Tony and held the book out between them. 

“This is the Book of Cagliostro. It touches on a lot of subjects, including some of the nastiers dimensions. But what we’re interested in is—” He flipped the pages without touching them, opening to the section on the Eye of Agamotto. “—time. Controlling it instead of letting it control you.”

“I’m sorry, are we just gonna forget about that little tiff we just had?” Tony hissed. “I mean, _yesterday’s_ little tiff.”

“Yes we are, Stark,” Stephen said plainly. “You came here because you wanted me to help you. With about an hour of knowing you, I can tell that whatever happens in my future, you don’t like me. That’s fine.” He snapped the book shut, Tony jumped—not hiding that look of _something_ very well this time. “But I _am_ going to help you, petty differences aside.”

“You sound like the kinda guy that likes the sound of his own voice.”

Stephen sighed sharply through his nose, narrowed his eyes at Tony, didn’t back down. “The only way that I learned to control the power of the stone was through practice of the mystic arts. You’ve seen what I can do. If there’s any way that these rituals and spells can be used with the gauntlet in the same way they were with the Eye, I’m going to teach you how.”

Tony swelled up with another quip on his tongue, Stephen could practically already hear it. But pain hitched up on his face, and with one hand on his chest where his stitches would be, he deflated.

“Okay, Doc,” he said finally. “No more sass, cross my heart. For the next… eight minutes.”

Stephen nodded. “I’ll take what I can get.”

“C’mon, that’s sass.”

“Right, sorry.” He let the Book of Cagliostro ascend from his hand back to the spot he’d had it levitating minutes ago. His hands free, he crossed them at his chest and formed odd lines with his fingers. “This is the configuration for opening the Eye of Agamotto.”

No one could miss the way Tony’s eyes lingered on the trembling in Stephen’s fingers, the prominent scars. He was used to that look by now. He just didn’t have time for this conversation.

“Stark,” Stephen said sharply, snapping Tony back from whatever reverie he’d drifted into. “Like this.”

Tony gave a small nod, settled his shoulders and let out a single breath before he carefully copied Stephen’s gesture. Held it there, making sure his fingers matched the precise position the sorcerer was showing him.

“So, what happened?” Tony asked, looking Stephen somewhere in the chest. “With the hand tremors. Wizard accident?”

Stephen physically flinched. Just slightly, but it was enough to notice. He looked Tony in the eye until Tony found his.

“Car accident. My hands were literally pulverized.” 

At least Tony gave an appropriate pause to appreciate what the sorcerer admitted. “Y’know, I was gonna say something about being blown up in Afghanistan, but I think that counts as a quip.”

“Pretty sure it does,” Stephen sighed. “I came to Kamar-Taj to heal, but found that I make a better Master of the Mystic Arts. It took me a long time to accept that these hands could do anything anymore, let alone conjure spells. Just do the gestures, practice. The rest will come.”

He moved his hands into the second position, sweeping them away from one another. If he’d been wearing the Eye of Agamotto, its aperture would have clicked open to reveal the stone inside.

Tony’s face was an absolute portrait of concentration, stoic and serious for once in the six days Stephen had known him. And that statuesque concentration was situated directly over the thrift store kitten shirt.

Stephen’s chest seized with a single laugh, and his hands nearly dropped away from their position.

“Sorry,” he elucidated when Tony’s eyes snapped up to his, questioning. “It’s really hard to take you seriously in that shirt.”

Tony glanced down, remembering just how hideous it was. He poked a finger hard into the topmost kitten. “You bought this on purpose. You said ‘this’ll make him look like an idiot’ and you bought it.”

Stephen’s mouth ticked up into a little grin, which turned into a little laugh. “Well, it worked.” He let the laughter trickle out of him—light, brief, but most welcome.

“Huh,” Tony said, and the edge eased out of the line of his shoulders. “I’m pretty sure that’s the first time you cracked a real smile the whole time I’ve known you.”

“Well, it was— _will be_ —the end of the world, apparently.”

“Universe,” Tony corrected him again.

“Semantics.” Another smirk followed, which drew a short, painful laugh out of Tony.

Two struck on the clock. Stephen took a short breath, sighed, and couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“See you tomorrow, Doc,” Tony said instead, getting the last word this time, and disappeared in a green light.

Stephen scrubbed at his eyes, threaded his fingers back through his hair, and waved absently at the floating books. They lowered themselves slowly back to the surface of the desk as Stephen made his way out of the room. 

He needed more structure. Less deviation, less banter. Ten minutes was infinitesimal, it was a pathetic amount of time to teach advanced mystical techniques. He needed to take notes, maybe use something to record his ten minutes so he wouldn’t repeat himself and waste any extra time.

As he passed by the desk, he scribbled a short shopping list as well as his hand would allow.

+++

“Why are you on Stark’s Wikipedia page?” Wong asked, sidling up beside Stephen’s chair. Stephen scrolled further down the page.

“Trying to find out if he’s a vegetarian,” he murmured. “I’d probably get better results in a gossip magazine.”

“One should never look a gift sandwich in the mouth,” Wong said, nodding sagely as though he’d just said something profound. Stephen grinned, closed the laptop.

“Ham and swiss it is, then.”

At ten-to-two, Tony appeared right on cue, met by Stephen—both of his hands occupied. One with a handheld tape recorder, which he clicked on as soon as Tony arrived, and the other with a small plate and a ham sandwich.

“Yesterday—last lesson—we introduced the gestures for opening the Eye of Agamotto,” Stephen said into the recorder. He waggled the plate in Tony’s direction, eyes narrowed in barely-contained aggravation. “Come on, Stark. I don’t want you passing out from starvation.”

“Is it toasted?” Tony asked, though gladly accepting the offering. He tore into it almost immediately. All right, either non-vegetarian or just desperate enough to not care. Note taken on toasted sandwiches.

“Stark demonstrated the ability to parrot simple hand gestures,” Stephen continued, pacing away to set the recorder on the desk. He turned back, waiting for Tony to finish eating. “That’s good,” he said in response to the glare Tony shot across the sandwich at him. “Learning and mimicking the gestures is the first step to channeling power through them.”

“Awshome,” Tony managed around a full mouth.

“Chew your food, Stark,” Stephen sighed, his eyes practically rolling out of his skull.

“Okay, Mom,” Tony grumbled back.

Stephen crossed his arms, but not out of frustration. He resumed the position for the gesture they had introduced yesterday, held it there long enough to be studied again.

“So,” Tony said, setting the empty plate aside—on the now-empty table they’d used for surgery that Stephen had moved just slightly out of the way. He mimicked the gesture again, sucking in a shallow breath. “This spell, or whatever. You think it’s gonna help me get out of this loop?”

“I don’t know what’s going to work,” Stephen admitted. He moved his hands fluidly to the second half of the gesture, and Tony followed. “I don’t know what removing the stone from the Eye and putting it in that gauntlet has done to the properties of the stone as I know them. I don’t even know if you’re going to be able to conjure anything out of these gestures.”

“So you’re saying it was a mistake to come here,” Tony snapped, looking irritated under his concentration.

“No,” Stephen amended. “I was probably the best choice you had, considering you might have died from that wound under anyone else’s watch.”

Tony’s gesture faltered, and the hand that wasn’t trapped by the gauntlet hovered momentarily over his hastily-stitched wound. His fingers twitched and then balled into a loose fist.

“Thanks,” he said, barely audible. But he did raise his eyes, meet Stephen’s watchful gaze.

Stephen only nodded, and said: “Keep practicing.” 

Three minutes of silence passed with Stephen pacing the room and watching Tony’s hand movements.

“When do you know it’s working?” Tony asked at last. 

“It’s not just waving your arms around and hoping magic comes out,” Stephen said, coming to a halt at Tony’s shoulder. “You have to be able to find the energy inside of you and tell it what you want it to do.”

“Okay, Doc, you’re a man of science,” Tony said, dropping his arms in frustration. “Explain to me exactly what you mean by ‘energy’? I know enough about biology to—”

“I know it doesn’t make sense,” Stephen interrupted him. “Not everything does. Not everything _can_. At the risk of sounding _corny_ … you have to feel it.”

“I don’t think _corny_ is the word I’d pick.”

Stephen ran a hand over his eyes, shoulders deflating. “Okay. We’ll start the next lesson with something easier.”

“I’m not a kid,” Tony snapped.

“But you’re not a sorcerer, either,” Stephen countered, just as sharp. “You know it’s possible, you’ve seen it with your own eyes. If you’re not willing to meet me halfway, here, this just _might_ be a waste of both our time.”

“Easy for you to say,” Tony raised his voice, “you’ve _got_ some time left! What if this is it, and I can’t handle this and I mess up so royally I break the universe more than it already is?”

Stephen’s chest puffed out, ready for some acerbic jab to match Tony’s souring mood. But he miraculously restrained himself. He _did_ have more time than Tony. A long breath came out of him, and with that sigh, he laid a heavy hand on Tony’s shoulder.

“How are your stitches?”

Tony nearly stumbled from the shifting gears of conversation, but it was enough to take the fight out of him. “Not much different from twenty minutes ago, to be honest, Doc.”

The clock called an end to their meeting, and Stephen took a step backwards, his eyes on Tony.

“Don’t force it,” he advised. “Just try to relax.”

Tony’s awkward, nervous laughter was cut off as the light flashed and Stephen was alone again.


	5. training montage

“Shields,” Stephen said clearly as soon as Tony appeared. He gripped his fists tight, conjured the mandalas, and punched the shields into existence with a sharp exhale of exertion.

Tony slowly held both hands half up in surrender, a weak smile trying to take hold on his face.

“A simple spell,” Stephen said, shaking the shields off of his hands. “Even simple enough for Tony Stark.”

“Wow,” Tony laughed. “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel, Doc?”

Stephen held up his fists again, nodded at his student. Tony shrugged, held up his fists, and copied his movements.

“Shields are your first defense,” Stephen said, repeating the motions. Watched as Tony mimicked his configurations. “You’ve got the movements, Stark, just project through them.”

“Project _what_?” 

“Energy,” Stephen suggested, running through the movements once more. “Strength, power; anything you can feel, you can summon in your defense.”

Tony frowned, didn’t meet his eyes. Stephen took a step back, circled around him. “Keep practicing that formation. Focus.”

“You’re being spectacularly vague,” Tony snapped. 

With his circuit finished, Stephen stopped directly in front of his pupil. Started him down, a serious frown like a cut across his face. He took both of Tony’s fists in his hands, held them tight.

“You can feel the resistance on your fists, right?”

Tony leveled a searingly sarcastic glare in his direction, but Stephen ignored it. Instead, he pushed back against Tony’s defenses.

“The resistance of the physical is just as substantial as the metaphysical. Just like you can push back against me,” Stephen said, goading the man to push back against him, “you can push back against the metaphysical. You’re in charge. _Prove it_.”

And with a look of frustration, Tony shoved Stephen backward, enough to make him stumble into the cloak’s embrace. It lifted him just slightly off the ground, brought him back to the space directly in front of Tony.

In a flash, Stephen conjured a sabre of pure energy, flickering orange like a fire.

“ _Now_ push me,” Stephen commanded, barely hiding a smirk, and he took a swing.

Tony’s free arm swung up with a shout, and his armor bled back out of the arc reactor in his chest—just enough to form an arm to block the swing of Stephen’s sabre. Sparks of magical energy came off from the contact, lit up Tony’s wide eyes.

“With your shields, Stark,” Stephen barked. And he swung again.

Tony backed away, and he held up his fists just as Stephen had shown him and tried to punch the shields into existence the same way the sorcerer had. Instead, he barely managed to dodge the swipe of the sabre.

“Come on, I—” Tony complained, dodging another attack. “I thought you told me not to pull my stitches!”

“Don’t,” Stephen advised, twirling the sabre at his side idly. “Conjure a shield, stop running away.”

Tony growled wordlessly, slipping behind a glass case containing what looked like a very interesting and very old shield to get away from the levitating wizard with a sword. He tried again, punching the air three times to no effect. 

Stephen pursued, stabbing into the air over Tony’s head. He ducked with a small sound not unlike a yelp. They marched backwards—Stephen slicing through the air effortlessly, and Tony alternating between blocking with his armored arm, ducking under his attacks, and trying desperately to conjure the shields.

The sorcerer finally chased Tony up against the far wall of the room, and Tony smacked into the wood with a wounded cry, a hand to his chest. Stephen took one last swing.

Tony crossed his arms in front of his face, and as he threw them desperately back out, they came with a sudden burst of energy. The shockwave hit Stephen and blew him several feet backwards through the air. 

Stephen stared, breathing hard. Tony’s mouth dropped open, and his eyes flicked from Stephen to his own hands. 

“Good,” Stephen breathed, leaning back into the cloak. He nodded, smiled. “That was good.”

+++

“I don’t even remember what I did to try to do it again,” Tony mused, trying again to summon even the faintest shield.

Stephen drifted by, holding a book out for Tony to see. Tony leaned over, idly holding his hands in the position in which he’d conjured the blast. Stephen’s finger traced the line of Nepalese, even knowing Tony probably didn’t know a word.

“This is an old Master’s diary,” Stephen murmured, absently keeping an eye on Tony’s hand movements in close proximity. “His account of the first time he was able to conjure anything at all—three months into his training—reads almost like yours. Rather than a solid shield, he was able to concentrate a blast like you did yester—a few minutes ago.”

Tony grinned up at Stephen. “Three months, huh? I gotta be some kind of prodigy, then. Golden child kind of thing.”

Stephen closed the book and rolled his eyes, but a similar smirk pulled at one edge of his mouth. “Or maybe you have a good teacher.”

“Hm,” Tony mused in a faux-thoughtful way. “Nah, must be the other thing.” He flicked his wrists, and sparks of something tried to catch on his knuckles.

An uncomfortable look took hold of Tony’s face, and he quickly asked: “Hey, Doc, d’you have a Little Wizard’s Room I can use?”

Stephen wasn’t sure why it struck him as funny, but his mouth parted for a laugh that bubbled lowly out of him. “Go down the hall behind you, third door on the left.”

Tony shot him a double-thumbs-up and whirled from his spot in a hurry.

He returned to the artifact room just in time to open his mouth to say something funny (so Stephen guessed by the proud look on his face that usually preceded a joke) and disappear in a flash of green light.

+++

“You’re exhausted,” Stephen drawled, looking up from the book he had been flipping through.

“Wow, how’d you guess?” Tony managed to fluidly work the middle finger into the space between gestures when he thought Stephen wasn’t looking (he was).

“When was the last time you had any sleep?” Stephen closed the book, set it on the desk, and glided over to Tony’s side.

“Uh,” Tony thought, face pinching at the effort. “Not sure how long we were in the spacesh—” He balked from Stephen’s livid ‘no spoilers’ face. “Forty-eight hours, maybe more. I’ve had worse.”

“So have I.” Stephen crossed his arms. “But were those forty-eight hours when you were twenty years younger, and not having just fought for the safety of the universe?”

Tony pulled his animated face into something terribly offended. “Hey, how old d’you think I am, Doc?”

A knowing smile spread easily on Stephen’s face. “I’ve read your Wiki.”

“Anyone can edit those things,” Tony muttered, looking away.

Stephen took in a sharp breath in the brief silence that followed. “Maybe you should try to sleep for a few loops.”

Tony blinked hard and purposefully, and his mouth dropped open a notch. “Are you _joking?_ I couldn’t get knocked out for surgery, but now you’re asking me to take a _nap?_ ”

“Well, I—” Stephen cut himself off. He _had_ insisted on a local. And Tony had been through a huge amount of pain, still stiff. The truncated sentence stood in the silent air like it had been sliced with a knife as deeply as Tony had been when he’d first arrived at the Sanctum.

And in that silence, with Stephen (for once) lost for words, Tony’s face loosened into something kinder, another altogether unprecedented event.

“I was an ass,” Stephen finished. Before it could sink in, he continued: “You know how the body reacts if you don’t sleep. Impaired coordination and memory, disorientation—” 

“You’re right, I _do_ know,” Tony grumbled, and his free hand pinched the bridge of his nose. “And, yeah, I could use a snooze. But I’m still kinda in ass-kicking, universe-saving mode. And this thing…” He held up the gauntlet with a familiar look of distaste.

“It’s been thirteen days—thirteen loops—and the gauntlet hasn’t done anything aside from keep you stuck in this time trap. I think we can afford to let you take a power nap.”

“Well, what if, with me out of the way, that’s just the opportunity this thing needs to go nuclear?”

“I’ll be here,” Stephen said plainly. “You said that your ten minute intervals are continual, so there’s no time you’d have to yourself. If anything unusual starts happening with the gauntlet, I’ll wake you up.”

Tony gave a single hard laugh, scrubbed a hand through his hair, and began to pace. “And this isn’t just some long con to get this thing off my arm?” he asked, again waving the gauntlet like it was some plastic toy.

“No,” Stephen answered, his lip pulling back in disgust. “Why the hell would I want that thing?”

Tony heaved a full-lunged sigh, regretted it, and finally flopped down into the huge armchair in the corner. “Power nap, huh?”

Stephen shrugged. “Worth a try.”

Wong stepped into the artifact room with a newspaper in hand, pulling the leaf of coupons out with a flourish.

“Stephen—” he started, but found a strong hand on his arm to halt his forward progress.

“He has two minutes left in this loop,” Stephen said quietly in his ear. “Can you wait two minutes to tell me about the sale on bratwurst?”

Wong’s eyes traveled across the room to the rumpled figure of Tony Stark in the overstuffed armchair in the corner, head lolled back and mouth wide open—breathing deeply and loudly. The gauntlet, though still menacing, was silent. 

“Shouldn’t you be training?” Wong asked, though a corner of his mouth curled up in amusement.

“Work him too hard, and any training we give him is useless. He’s human, after all.” Stephen glanced down at the coupons, and slyly flicked his gaze back up at Wong. “Cut out the one for roast beef.”

+++

For five days, Stephen walked through the artifact room, closed all of the curtains, and turned out all the lights. He kept one candle on the desk for himself, and was always ready on his feet when ten-to-two rolled around—just in case. But for five days, a deeply-sleeping Tony Stark was all that awaited him. No sudden bursts of power from the gauntlet, or even any shift in the time loops.

On the second day, the cloak had flown off of his shoulders and fluttered inches over Tony. Stephen hissed, motioned silently but firmly for the cloak to come back. But it chose instead to settle over Tony and tuck itself in. Tony hardly even shifted.

“Traitor,” Stephen had mumbled, plopping down into his own chair.

On the sixth day, after the cloak had nestled in and Stephen had taken his own seat, Tony let out a small, disgruntled noise. Stephen glanced up, his eyes on the gauntlet. Nothing.

“Day nineteen,” Stephen murmured into the recorder. “Stark’s still sleeping. No activity from the gauntlet.” He paused to take a long breath, which came out in a low sigh. He leaned back in his chair, fixed his eye on the sleeping figure across the room. “I originally intended to wake him after the third day, but I don’t think there’s any harm in letting him get all the rest he can. He’s demonstrated the ability to conjure a simple blast of energy after only three hours of training. He’s…” The sorcerer swept his hair back with his empty hand, taking his time to choose his words. “Incredibly, I’m sure he’s holding back. If he can summon even—”

Tony uttered a strangled noise in his sleep, and Stephen jumped, set the recorder on the desk.

The cloak popped back up into the air, hovering over Tony’s form quizzically. Stephen rose from his chair, suddenly on full alert. 

With a tight shout, Tony’s eyes flew open, hands clamping down on the arms of the chair to keep himself from flying forward out of it. That scream grabbed Stephen like tiny fists crushing his lungs, shards of glass in his blood. 

The cloak grabbed him, pulled him right up into Tony’s space more quickly than he could have moved himself.

“Stark,” Stephen called—heard Wong running into the room, saw the light off of Wong’s shields shining off the glass cases around them—and took hold of Tony’s shoulders. Planted him in place, grounded him. “Stark, are you all right?”

Tony was fully awake, and he was shaking. Shaking _hard_ , covered in cold sweat. He took huge gulps of the Sanctum’s air, and this close, Stephen could see the tears in his eyelashes.

Tony’s hand pressed into Stephen’s chest, and his next breath shuddered out of him. 

“You’re okay,” Tony breathed. Gulped in another huge breath, nodded. “You’re all right.”

Stephen’s eyebrows pressed low into confusion. “I’m…” he began, but he held his tongue. He nodded to match. “I’m okay.”

Tony’s hand patted Stephen firmly in the chest, deftly hiding that _something_ yet again. The clock in the hall chimed the hour just as an unsure smirk attempted to take its place on Tony’s lips.

“That sucked,” he said, somewhere between laughter and tears. And then he was gone in a burst of green light.

Stephen rocked back on his heels, still crouched in front of the empty chair and staring at it. His heart was still pumping too quickly, lodged somewhere painful in his throat. Behind him, Wong threw the lights on, exposing Stephen and the confusion still screwed onto his face. His fingers were trembling when he stood, and he tightened his fists to try and rid them of the tremors.


	6. breakdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone, thank you SO much for being awesome, I really appreciate all of you who have stopped by so far. I've added tags for PTSD and panic attacks just in case, and this is a warning beforehand, too. Thanks again!

When Tony appeared back in his chair, he was struck by the smell of hot tea steeping. 

Stephen handed him a mug, old and well-handled, with whatever label had been embossed on it long faded away. It smelled like lavender, and the steam curled like it was alive.

When he took the proffered mug, the tension bled out of Tony’s shoulders like he’d been deflated. His throat bobbed and caught whatever words had been brewing there. His eyes were still wet, but he was grounded now. He let out a sigh, and tried for something like a smile.

“I was hoping for something stronger.” It didn’t have his usual verve.

“I think it’s best we don’t get you drunk.” Stephen took a seat in front of him, the cloak allowing him to hover in midair as though he’d pulled up another chair. He held his own mug—this one with the phrase _#1 Grandpa_ in green on one side.

“I was talking about coffee,” Tony laughed, and he dared a sip.

Something twisted low in Stephen’s stomach, which turned into a smile on his lips—much less sarcastic and much quieter than he’d meant. It was gone by the time Tony looked up from his tea, replaced with something a little more stoic.

“We’ll take the day off,” Stephen said, taking a drink of his own tea, “but next loop, we’ll keep training with your shields.”

Tony nodded, and he didn’t say anything. Stephen took a breath, like he had something else to say, but then he didn’t. They sat in amiable silence for six whole minutes.

“Thanks,” Tony said at last. It seemed like that would be the last word, but after another moment, he sucked in a sharp breath and continued. “Y’know, I thought you were a complete asshole.”

Stephen glared over the top of his mug, halfway through a drink. Tony held up a hand in front of him in his defense. 

“In the future, I mean. Future You. I thought you were an enormous dickbag.”

“I think I get that part,” Stephen grumbled, his eyes still narrowed in scrutiny. “What’s your point?”

“That you’re… not,” Tony said. He lifted himself out of the chair and set his mug of tea aside. “Maybe a little grumpy, but I’m sure I’m not a treat to work with either.”

He took another long breath, and he held out his one free hand. 

Stephen stared at it for just a moment, and then the cloak lifted him to his feet to meet him face to face. Stephen took Tony’s hand, and they shook. 

“Let’s get back to work,” Tony said firmly, and he continued shaking Stephen’s hand until the clock chimed in the hall. The green light took him, and Stephen was left grasping thin air in his absence.

+++

Where Tony had left the tea in his last loop, he turned to find that it had been replaced with a full, hot mug of black coffee.

With his back turned, pulling the books they would need off the desk, Stephen missed Tony’s eyes on him. Somewhere between dumbfounded and a dawning new appreciation. He grabbed the coffee in his off hand and downed a third of it in one go.

“All right, Number One Grandpa,” Tony said, coming up alongside the sorcerer to clamp a hand on his shoulder—the terrified nightmare was gone from his eyes, replaced with his usual brightness. “Let’s do this.”

Stephen didn’t raise his eyes from the text levitating in front of him, but he couldn’t hide the little smile blooming on his face. “Keep practicing,” was all he said.

+++

Stephen wondered if they’d become friends, somehow.

Twenty-six days ago, he only knew about Tony Stark through the latest Avengers scoop, his face plastered on gossip rags. Not so many days ago, Stephen might have said that Stark was arrogant, infuriating, maybe even insufferable.

Now Tony was laughing at his jokes (and, Stephen had to admit, he was laughing at Tony’s, too). They were getting more practice crammed into their brief sessions than ever. Even in ten minute bursts, they were finally beginning to click. Drums finally synchronized on the same beat.

Still, after five days of constant training, Tony still hadn’t been able to produce substantial shields. Stephen had considered bringing a sling ring into the equation—after all, it was what helped _him_ come to terms with the mystical and his ability to control it—but balked at the idea of losing Tony (and the gauntlet, of course) with no way of knowing where he’d disappeared to.

He could see that the frustration was beginning to show again in the cracks of Tony’s well-made facade. A facade that he somehow was still convinced he needed.

Stephen needed Tony in the right frame of mind in order to secure the stone, he told himself as he hovered idly by—chatting aimlessly, correcting the positioning of Tony’s hands and fingers, reading the juiciest entries from various Masters’ diaries out loud (Tony snorted so hard he claimed he nearly pulled a stitch).

Stephen conjured the sword again, and though he didn’t resort to chasing Tony through the maze of artifacts again, they did manage to replicate the results of the first experiment. The potential was there, if Tony could just reach out and _focus_.

The noise out of Tony’s lungs was half sigh, half chuckle. “You deserve some kind of award for putting up with me, Doc.”

“I really do,” Stephen said drolly, fighting a laugh when Tony’s head swiveled sharply to glare when he dared to agree.

Ten minutes at a time, Tony grew on him.

+++

Tony appeared right on time, his hands still clenched in the summoning position. “Let me tell you, Doc—” he began, but snapped his mouth shut as he looked up not into Stephen Strange’s cold eyes, but Wong’s.

“Oh.” It dropped into the room like a stone in cold, still water. Tony chewed on his next words, craning his neck around Wong and his cheeky smirk in search of Stephen. “Where’s…?”

“I’ll be your teacher today, Stark,” Wong said evenly, and he held his hands out in the familiar starting position for conjuring shields. When Tony’s mouth pressed into a concerned line, Wong continued: “Stephen has _actual_ duties as the protector of this Sanctum. I’m sure you can spare him one day out of so many he’s already given you.”

Tony’s face was a wash of unsure emotions, and he drew away a step in deep and sudden thought.

“I’ve gone over all of Stephen’s tapes, so we won’t be wasting any time,” Wong was still going on. “Show me your technique, Stark.”

“Right, um,” Tony began, settling awkwardly into a battle-ready position.

They ran through the motions again and again, Tony’s movements consistent and concise. Wong sighed with his whole frame, his face a mask of stoicism—and his eyes lingered for quite a long time on the gauntlet and the stones set there, still apprehensive.

“Stark,” Wong said suddenly, causing Tony’s movements to come to a stuttering halt. “Your gestures are extremely precise. I can see nothing wrong with your technique, but… You’re not focused on the spell.”

“Look, I’m trying my best, here,” Tony snapped, his spine going rigid in his defense.

Wong shook his head, clasped his hands behind his back, and began to pace in front of him. “Your mind is muddled. Going in too many directions. If you can’t come to terms with all the ways your mind is trying to take you, you won’t be able to focus your energy into these spells. What is so important that it’s distracting you from controlling the stone?”

Tony’s face had gone still as ice, frozen in a look of panic. His throat bobbed painfully, and his next breath shuddered out of him like he’d been holding it for minutes (maybe he had been).

“Stark?” Wong asked, looking him worriedly in the face.

The clock in the hall cried out into the chilly silence, just as the fear took hold of Tony’s entire body.

+++

“How was he?” Stephen asked.

“Strange,” Wong answered as he reshelved the books they hadn’t gone through. “I could hardly get him to focus. How do you manage it every day?”

Stephen didn’t have an answer on hand for that, and forgot when the cloak whirled off of his shoulders and sped for the artifact room—as if the cloak had some instinct for it, or had come to somehow read the time. He found himself smoothing down an errant flyaway as he entered the room himself.

The cloak circled and finally came to hover approximately three feet in front of what had come to be known as Tony’s chair. That must have been where Wong left him. Stephen sifted through the notes on his desk and finally found the recorder he’d left for Wong. He rewound the tape, played through the end of the last day he’d practiced with Tony, and then listened to Wong’s lesson.

Right from the start, Tony’s voice seemed off. The pauses, how unsure he sounded. And then, by the end, when he had gone completely silent, failing to answer to Wong’s repeated calls for his attention. Something was wrong. 

Something that sat like a hot rock in Stephen’s gut.

The lights flickered, and Stephen’s head shot up. He stopped the tape, and set the recorder aside—completely forgotten.

Tony reappeared, stiff and shaking. His breath caught awkwardly in his throat, and he stumbled backwards away from Stephen. The back of his legs caught on the chair and Tony fell hard into the seat. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

“St—” Stephen started to say, but when his own knees froze him in place, he found his jaw locked tight to match.

Tony clamped his free hand over his mouth, barely sucking breath through his nose to keep up with how hard he was shaking. Tried to move, but found himself practically welded to the chair. 

His next breath was a terrible gasp. Both of his hands (one with the gauntlet, one human and naked) pressed to the top of his head almost as if trying to keep himself grounded.

“It’s my fault,” Tony said finally, his voice anything but strong. “Doc,” he tried to swallow against his dry throat, and a look of pain spasmed on his face. “It’s my fault, all of them. I should’ve—” He squeezed his eyes shut, ducked his head down so he couldn’t look Stephen in the face.

That part of Stephen that was still a doctor finally pulled itself up through the bubbling feeling that he’d identified as _concern_ to tell him that this was a panic attack. He’d dealt with patients’ panic attacks in school (aloof, egotistical, med school student Stephen Strange; like he’d given a damn about any of them back then), he could deal with this one, too.

“Tony, breathe,” Stephen said as calmly as he could—he was across the room and by the chair more quickly than he probably should have been able to (the cloak; it was trembling to match). “Deep breaths, five seconds—”

Tony’s head came up, hands still clamped to his head, and locked eyes. Terrified, frozen. But he nodded as tightly as he could, started to breathe in (stuttering, scared).

“Five seconds out,” Stephen urged, and Tony obliged. “It’s going to pass soon. Just breathe. Five seconds…”

They breathed together for an entire silent minute before Tony’s hands unlatched themselves from his head and settled back on the arms of his chair. Stephen moved slowly in, held his hand out between them in question, and Tony could only nod.

Stephen took Tony’s empty hand in his, held his fingers firmly to the wrist and felt for the hammering pulse there. 

“I got him killed,” Tony said. “It’s my fault. He died because of _me_.”

Stephen’s eyes flicked up to Tony’s and held there for a long second. Oh, this was dangerous. _Knowledge of future events_ , Wong’s voice echoed in his memory. But in that moment, the tangled timeline didn’t matter.

“Tell me,” Stephen said firmly.

“Pete,” Tony uttered, like the name hurt on his tongue. “Peter Parker. God, he was just a kid. Shouldn’t even—” His breath caught again, and Stephen reminded him to breathe again, fingers on Tony’s pulse. “I got him caught up in all this, should’ve told him to go home. Should’ve _made_ him…” The next breath that bubbled out of him was a reedy, sad little laugh. “Finally figured out my name, huh?”

Stephen blinked at him, felt like he’d been thrown.

“I gotta figure this thing out, Doc,” Tony breathed, his head falling back from the exertion of the attack. “I gotta stop this goddamn loop and get back, fix it. I just—I see his face every time I close my eyes. Right before he’s—he’s gone. Right before you—” 

His head snapped back up like he’d been struck, fearfully found Stephen watching him intensely. Finally, he could see the _something_ that Tony had been trying so hard to hide. Raw, naked guilt. The force of it slammed into Stephen’s chest, even when Tony quickly looked anywhere else.

“I know it’s stupid, but—I know he’s out there right now. Running around, doing stupid teenager stuff. I have to know he’s okay. Right now, he’s fine. There’s still a chance.”

Stephen didn’t say what he wanted to (yes, that’s very stupid, of course he’s okay this is his past, too). “You know there’s a Tony Stark that’s perfectly capable of looking after him in this timeline,” he said instead. Tony’s pulse had fallen significantly, still not back to its normal level.

A manic little laugh cracked out of Tony’s lungs. “Would _you_ trust me?” He met Stephen’s eye again, and this time they held.

“Okay,” he finally accepted. His voice felt too quiet, but still filled up too much of his throat. “Okay, Tony. Peter Parker. I’ll make sure.”

A nod. “Thanks, Stephen.”

Two chimes of the clock later, and Stephen was staring at an empty chair.


	7. spider child

It was easy enough to find Peter Parker almost immediately. A quick internet search told Stephen that there was a Peter Parker that had been involved in an incident at the Washington Monument with his debate team. Lived in Queens, had stellar grades according to the school newspaper, and was just about as scrawny and goofy-looking as most teenagers tended to be, according to his Facebook.

“Where are you going?” Wong asked, eyeing him up and down. “And in _that_ outfit?”

Stephen looked awkwardly down at himself—he thought that dressing in old slacks and a New York Rangers hoodie would be all the disguise a sorcerer might need in the bustle of the city. Maybe he thought wrong.

“I’m going shopping,” Stephen lied ineffectually. “Need anything?”

“An explanation when you get back,” Wong murmured, and he turned back to the books.

Stephen pinched the bridge of his nose, sighed, and circled his arm to form a portal with the sling ring.

The quiet Queens back alley he stepped into was only a block from the school, and he’d arrived only minutes before the students came streaming out the front doors. Surprisingly, the scrawny kid he’d seen in the few pictures posted to his account was one of the first bounding down the steps. Full speed on long and skinny legs. 

Stephen followed.

He looked fine, Stephen thought, and so his job was technically over. He’d done as Tony had asked, made sure the kid was okay (even if Stephen had known he would be, in Tony’s past). But there was a niggling something that wouldn’t stop chewing at Stephen’s mind as he dogged the kid’s heels.

How did Tony even know Parker? He was just some enthusiastic, bookish schoolboy. A ward? Apprentice of some kind? Part of a Tony Stark After School Program? And how could any of that gotten him killed on Tony’s watch? Stephen stuffed his hands in his pockets and walked faster to keep up.

He lost Peter around a blind corner. Stephen rushed up to the open mouth of the alley and looked in. Some odd rustling noise echoed there, but no sign of any activity, especially not his quarry.

Stephen took the first steps into the alley, feeling spectacularly foolish.

Even more so when something hit him from an angle, something sticky that plastered Stephen’s hand to the nearby wall.

“Hey!” A voice called, and Stephen’s head shot up to find a figure in red and blue costume, crouched on the fire escape across the alley from him. “Weird beardy guy! I know you’ve been following me for the last four blocks. Kinda creepy, y’know.”

Ah, Stephen thought, narrowing his eyes. _That’s_ how Tony knew him.

“So, you’re some kind of spider child?” Stephen asked drolly.

Peter groaned, pressed his face into both his hands and remarkably keeping his balance on the fire escape. “Spider-Man, I’m Spider- _Man_.”

“My name is Stephen Strange. I’m under instructions from Tony Stark,” Stephen said succinctly. He tugged at the hand that had been stuck (spider-webbed) to the wall and found it stuck as if in concrete.

Peter’s head bounced up, just minutely. The huge white eyes of his costume narrowed, but he didn’t move from his perch.

“Prove it,” the spider child challenged. 

“I would, but I’m a little tied up,” Stephen muttered.

“I’ve heard that one before,” Peter chided, but he lowered himself down on the string of a web regardless. He kept his distance, however. 

Stephen held up his free hand in a gesture of good will, and slowly reached into the back pocket of his slacks. It returned with the recorder, and Stephen rewounded it—he had come to know just how long ten minutes was on the tape in forward or reverse, he’d played through the lessons so many times.

He hit play, and Tony’s voice echoed in the small alley.

“ _You deserve some kind of award for putting up with me, Doc._ ”

“ _I really do_ ,” Stephen on the tape answered, followed by his tight laughter.

Stephen stopped the replay, and shrugged with his free arm. “Proof enough?”

Peter lingered, but his body language was like an open book—too full of energy, bouncing and ready to jump to conclusions; eager but nervous.

“Okay, so, that definitely sounded like Mister Stark,” Peter began, “but what if you’ve got him tied up or something, and _made_ him say that?”

Stephen sagged with a roll of his eyes. “Parker,” he sighed, already fed up with the exchange, “I swear if you don’t get me down _right now_ , I’m going get myself down, and I’m not sure you _or_ Tony want that to happen.”

“God, okay,” Peter hissed quickly, and he scrambled into Stephen’s space to pull the webbing off the wall and almost completely off Stephen’s hand. “Why’d Mister Stark send someone to keep an eye on me, anyway?”

Stephen flexed his hand, hoped the rest of the webbing wouldn’t be too hard to wash off. “He just… wants to make sure you’re all right.”

“He knows I can take care of myself,” Peter protested. “I thought that’s what the whole ‘almost-an-Avenger’ thing was about. Unless—” the eyes of the suit narrowed again. “Is this another test?”

“It’s not a test,” Stephen assured him blandly. “Just checking in, Parker. Don’t get into too much trouble. You…” And the way he trailed off made even energetic Peter slow to a stop. “You wouldn’t want to worry him too much, right?”

“Mister Stark’s _worried_ about me?” Peter practically trilled. He snatched the cowl off his face, revealing a wide, boyish face that looked far too young for Stephen’s liking ( _he died because of **me**_ ), lit up from the inside and grinning. “That’s awesome!”

Stephen’s face unbelievably morphed into an unsure smirk. It fell back off his face almost as quickly when he realized exactly the implications this conversation could have in the current timeline.

“Parker, listen to me,” Stephen said seriously. It took a long moment for the excitement to dim from Peter’s eyes to be forcibly replaced with heroic stoicism. “You have to swear that you will not, under absolutely _any_ circumstance, let him know we’ve spoken.”

“What? Why not?” Peter’s face buckled into confusion. “Is this like… top secret or something?”

“It’s… very complicated,” Stephen muttered, and he raised a hand to nervously pass it back through his hair.

“Ooh, don’t get that in your—” Peter attempted to speak far too quickly to stop him, but it was too late. Stephen had stuck thin strands of the web in his hair, sticking it nearly straight up on one side. “Yikes,” Peter added thinly.

Stephen sighed, earth-shatteringly dry, and rolled his eyes until they pinned Peter to the spot.

“Um, don’t worry Mister Strange,” Peter tried to assure him, his wide-eyed face attempting to gather itself and only managing to jumble further into adolescent awkwardness. “I’ve got, like, a ton of dissolving solution in my room, I promise.”

+++

Stephen had pulled up a second chair, because the cloak had already detached from his own shoulders and had been practically thrumming with anticipation as it hovered around Tony’s chair.

His hands had started to shake, and he clenched them together so he wouldn’t have to think about it.

With a flash of green light, he was looking again at Tony Stark—still nervous and shaking as he’d left him. Before either of them could say a word, the cloak wrapped itself protectively around Tony’s shoulders. 

He gave an unsure laugh, and slid a sideways look at Stephen.

“It has a mind of its own,” the sorcerer admitted, smirking. He shifted his weight in his chair. “Tony, I—”

Suddenly, Tony rose from his own chair and began to pace away. Quite quickly. Stephen came slowly after him, apprehension writing itself in the lines of his forehead.

Tony came to a halt outside the artifact room, at the top of the stairs where the sun was shining through the huge, circular window. Even in the light, Tony was shivering. Stephen could see Wong watching from across the hall among the bookshelves, but he ignored him—he was on a mission.

“Why did I think this was a good idea?” Tony started to ramble, his voice thin and sad, looking anywhere else but the man that had come up behind him. “It’s stupid, I shouldn’t even have asked—”

“Tony,” Stephen said to quiet him. And for some reason, it worked, because Tony clamped his mouth shut. Turned to face him, the cloak billowing around him as he did. Stephen reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone, held it out between them. “He’s fine.”

The picture displayed on the phone had obviously been taken by Peter using Stephen’s phone. He was wearing the suit Tony had made him, but with the cowl taken off to expose his brilliant, childish grin. He’d slung an arm around Stephen’s shoulders to get him into frame—not only was some of the webbing still stuck in the sorcerer’s hair, but Peter had managed to give him surreptitious bunny ears for the selfie. Stephen’s mouth had been pinched into a tight line, but anyone who knew Stephen knew that there was a smile hiding in his eyes.

Tony’s mouth cracked almost immediately into a grin, and he started to laugh—hard and crystal clear. The laugh seemed to go on for ages, but not long enough. Not _nearly_ long enough, because it hitched up hard in his throat, caught horribly with a choking noise that changed it almost instantly into tears. 

There was no wailing or open sobbing, which somehow made it worse. Just quiet, sad tears rolling down Tony’s face. He tried to stop them, held his empty hand to his face and shoved them stubbornly away, but they were determined. His voice hit another laugh, but his mouth struggled between a grin and a terrible frown, trembling in between.

“That’s a great picture,” he managed between bitter sniffling, and his voice caught on another jag of a sob. “You look terrible.”

Stephen’s mouth opened, and he found it completely useless. It wouldn’t listen to a thing he wanted it to do, and neither would the rest of him. He was stuck. Trapped staring back at Tony—tears staining Tony’s face, staring _right back_ at him like he couldn’t move, either.

Both of them fixed on one another, and neither of them able to say a thing.

The clock was closer here, in the hall, and the chimes felt like they were hammering through him. Stephen took a breath, trying to say something (What? What could he possibly say?), but couldn’t.

Minutes passed after Tony had disappeared, and Stephen still stood in the light from the huge, circular window. Holding his phone in one hand still, the screen long gone dark. Staring into the emptiness that had just held Tony Stark ( _looking_ at him, right at him, tears in his eyes), the cloak sadly circling the empty space.

The horrible new feeling churned over and over in Stephen’s gut, and he took deep breaths to keep it from spreading. It felt like nausea, but so much worse. Like he was already sick—but from what, he didn’t know. 

He reminded himself to breathe.

“Stephen?” he finally recognized Wong’s voice, like he’d been calling for some time but Stephen hadn’t even heard him.

“I’m all right,” Stephen said quietly, not looking up. Only he wasn’t so sure that he was.

He didn’t sleep. Not for more than an hour. The image of Tony breaking into tears was burned into the back of his eyes. It had started to rain again some time after midnight, and the noise on the room helped to drown out the feelings and the thoughts and the images circling endlessly in his mind.

Stephen closed his eyes, threw an arm over them for effect.

Five seconds in…

+++

He didn’t even give Tony the chance to move as he came practically charging up the stairs to meet him, stuck in the same place they’d stood twenty-four hours ago. Tony barely even had time to react to the look of determination Stephen felt on his own face.

He grabbed Tony before he could escape, pulled him in tight and fit them together in a hard embrace. Felt his own breath trapped against Tony’s chest, and Tony’s catch and shudder against his.

At first, Tony didn’t move—still frozen. But Stephen held fast, and the cloak was certainly trying to help.

And finally (finally), Tony calmed down. It felt like every muscle in Tony’s body finally gave up the fight, and he relaxed in Stephen’s grip. Ducked his head into the space between Stephen’s neck and shoulder, and stayed there.

Stephen found himself letting out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. That feeling from yesterday was back, gripping his middle and spreading like a fire up into his lungs.

“When this is all over…” Stephen murmured into Tony’s hair, holding the pause maybe slightly longer than he should have, and found himself quietly grinning. “I’ll send you that picture.”

Tony burst into into giggles against him, not even bothering to unbury his face.

They didn’t get much done that day.


	8. anxiety bros

“You’re the last one, aren’t you?” Stephen asked, looking sideways across the room at Tony. “The last Avenger.”

He’d wondered for a long time, now. If Peter had been the only one whose death Tony blamed on himself. Why Tony thought he didn’t have anywhere else to go to control the stones but back in time to a sorcerer he claimed to barely know. 

“Jesus, I hope not,” Tony choked, half a depreciating laugh and half a wounded cry. “I gotta hope some of them made it.”

He flexed the fingers of his off-hand, and slowly brought the gauntlet to eye level and glared at it. Looked at it like he wanted to break it into thousands of pieces, melt it down, bury it so deep no one would ever find it. Like he hated it more than anything he’d ever laid eyes on before.

“We’ll figure it out, Tony,” Stephen said, calm and cool to the angry fire burning in Tony’s eyes.

For long seconds that followed, Tony couldn’t tear his vehement glare off of the gauntlet, as if just staring long enough would be enough to make it burst into flame.

Then, with a quick breath like he’d shaken off a heavy chill, he turned with a smirk to Stephen, the hand with the gauntlet dropping idly to his side again. 

“Y’know, I’m so used to the robes and the cloak and everything—is it weird that seeing you in a T-shirt is kinda freaking me out?”

Stephen smiled to match him, turned away and ran through the motion of summoning his shields. “It’s wizard laundry day,” he answered dryly.

Tony’s hard, full-body laughter echoed for a full second after he disappeared.

There was a flurry of knocking from the Sanctum’s front door, and with a mixed look of confusion, Stephen rose to answer it.

Peter Parker stood on his doorstep, awkwardly hitching his backpack up on one shoulder as the door opened between them.

Stephen sucked in a breath, ready to berate him for coming to his place of work, interrupting his readings, but the scoldings fell off his tongue with a sigh that deflated him.

“How did you find me?” was all he mustered.

“Uh,” Peter faltered, squinting in thought, “well, it’s called Google, and—”

“I know what Google is,” Stephen groaned, barely hiding a chuckle as he ran a tired hand down his face. “Shouldn’t you be doing homework?”

“Okay, here’s the thing about that. And when I say about that, I mean about something else.” He took a deep breath, likely preparing some truly high-speed rant, but Stephen stopped him with a single finger in the air.

“Just come inside,” he sighed, and stepped aside to allow the boy access.

“Wong, this is Peter Parker,” Stephen said absently, shutting the door as Peter followed (wide-eyed and staring ceiling-ward at the immensity of the Sanctum, the artifacts, anything he could take in). 

Wong had frozen at the top of the stairs, looking down at Stephen like he was currently on fire.

“ _Stephen_ ,” Wong said in a voice that sounded like a warning bell.

Stephen sighed yet again. “Take a seat, Parker.” 

He and Wong met at the top of the stairs, and both lowered their voices to keep them from carrying.

“ _This_ is what you were doing the other day?” Wong asked—just about as livid as Stephen had ever seen him.

Stephen frowned deeply. “I went to check on him _one time_. I didn’t ask him to come here.”

“Don’t you think that this timeline is broken enough?” Wong scolded, shaking his head but never breaking eye contact.

“For all we know, the timeline’s progressing like it always has been,” Stephen bit back. “I’m not going out of my way to change—”

“Running emotional errands for Stark isn’t changing anything? Would you have even known who Parker was without Stark’s intervention?”

“We can’t change the fact that Tony came back. Unless you suddenly _want_ me to use the Eye, now.”

“On a first-name basis, now, Stephen?”

There was only the tiniest pause between Wong’s insinuation and when it stuck like an accusatory arrow in Stephen’s heart. Stephen reeled up, chest out and his face gone fully red in barely-contained indignation. Wong didn’t back down, but neither did he challenge Stephen’s anger. He uttered a soul-weary sigh instead.

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe this is all how it indeed played out and will continue to unfold as it always has. That’s the problem with the future, isn’t it?”

“You won’t know until you get there,” Stephen finished for him. He didn’t smile, but they both nodded at one another and went their separate ways.

“I’m really sorry,” Peter said, absently wringing his hands as Stephen approached the chairs by the entrance. “Am I—am I not supposed to be here?”

“Don’t let Wong scare you off,” Stephen said, but didn’t take a seat. “What did you need from me that you made the trip all the way to the Village from Queens? You didn’t take a cab, did you?”

“Oh, uh,” Peter mumbled, and he held out his wrist to show Stephen the device strapped there. “I… I swang. Swung?” He cleared his throat awkwardly when Stephen didn’t supply the correct grammar, and tugged his sleeve back down over the web mechanism. “So, like I said, I Googled you after the other day. You used to be some kind of doctor, but then you kinda dropped off the face of the planet. And you live in this weird place that looks like a museum. How the heck do you know Mister Stark, anyway?” He bit his bottom lip in thought, as though he wasn’t sure he should say the next bit. “You don’t _actually_ have him tied up anywhere, do you?”

Stephen was laughing before he could stop himself, but that didn’t seem to settle Peter’s nerves.

“No,” Stephen answered. “But you’re going to have to take my word for it.” He narrowed his eyes, and finally did come to sit in the chair across from Peter—leaning slightly in, curious. “If you found the Sanctum just by looking me up on the internet, I’m sure you could’ve found my phone number, too. Why’d you actually make the trip?”

“Well,” Peter began, embarrassment turning his ears red. “Um, probably to find out if you can actually do magic and stuff.”

+++

Tony cackled, threw his head back and just laughed at him. “See, I told you he was a smart kid.”

Stephen shrugged, honestly flabbergasted. “If that’s the case, sooner or later he’s going to figure out that you’re actually here.”

“Not tied to a chair in the basement, though,” Tony said through a brilliant smile.

“Tony,” Stephen sighed, and he stepped up—not quite into the other man’s space, but very close. “You know I can’t.”

For just a split second, Tony pretended to not know what Stephen was talking about. But even that peeled away, leaving another terrible sadness on his face. But he nodded nonetheless.

“Yeah. Timelines and paradoxes and stuff,” Tony admitted. “I know.” A more fitting smirk settled on his lips. “Guess I’ll just have to settle for selfies.”

“For now,” Stephen said.

Something seemed to swell inside of Tony, emotion almost physically spilling out of him—out of his eyes, his half a smile. Suddenly, as if struck by inspiration, Tony punched out the configurations he’d been copying and studying for days (for hours)—precise, sharp, tight movements that he knew by heart.

Twin mandalas burst out of his hands in a flash of blue energy, circles etched with runes and dripping with arcane power.

“ _Woah_!” Tony cried, staring wide-eyed at the shields he’d conjured, dancing and alive at the end of his knuckles. “HA!” he crowed, grin nearly splitting his face in half. He dissolved into victorious laugher, holding his shields firmly and not letting them dissipate.

Stephen’s jaw waggled. He stared at Tony’s shields, almost couldn’t believe his eyes. Tony Stark had conjured shields after maybe five hours total of practice—fewer, he remembered, since he’d been asleep for several loops. Probably unprecedented, unbelievable, and yet _there it was_.

And then he joined in Tony’s infectious laughter (smiling so hard his face hurt).

“Holy shit,” Tony breathed, laughter still tinging his voice. 

Stephen met his eyes over the shields, matching his enthusiasm. “ _Holy shit_ ,” Stephen replied, hardly breathing.

Tony held an elbow out at Stephen, who didn’t quite seem to understand the gesture.

“C’mon, elbow bump,” Tony encouraged him, waggling his elbow at Stephen. “I’d totally high-five you, but I don’t wanna drop these things.”

And Stephen left him hanging, the incredulous smile crawling so slowly onto his face (watched Tony egging him on, not giving up an inch). And finally gave in, bumping his elbow against Tony’s.

“What… what now?” Tony asked, barely able to contain his excitement.

“Let’s test them out,” Stephen said, his smirk sliding sideways onto his lips. He whipped out his hand and conjured the sabre, swung it a few times through the air. “Ready?”

“Bring it on, Mister Wizard,” Tony called, crouching at the ready, shields standing strong before him. 

They met with a splash of color, sparks, and noise.

+++

Stephen woke like he’d been stabbed, scream caught halfway up his throat. His short, hard breaths tried to force their way out of his lungs, begging for more air. He threw off the sheets, was out of his room and perched over the sink in an instant. Heaving but not sick.

Even as the heavy fog of the nightmare was passing, he could still feel the oppressive, thick atmosphere of the Dark Dimension squeezing in on him. Staring down the end of the next way that he would die, and then again, and again. It still permeated his gut like a gunshot, like he was bleeding out again.

He ran a hand through his hair, realized how hard he was sweating, and groaned. He thought he’d seen the last of these terrors ages ago. 

Maybe one doesn’t get over dying countless times so easily.

Even though the sun wasn’t up yet to meet him, Stephen decided he wasn’t going to get any more sleep that night. 

“Woah, jeez,” Tony said with a jolt, a mere second after catching sight of Stephen. “You look like shit.”

Stephen rubbed his tired face, glared at Tony. “Your insight is astounding.”

Tony lingered, shifted his weight to his other foot, then said: “You okay?”

“Nightmares,” Stephen muttered, and with a wave, he’d summoned the Book of Cagliostro to his hands. 

Tony backed off, and his mouth pressed shut into a knowing line. “Yeah. I get it.”

Stephen glanced up—it hadn’t been that long ago that he’d seen Tony (vulnerable, for once, and afraid) snapped screaming out of his own nightmare. Something in the way Tony’s eyes flicked back up at him just then was attempting reassurance, even if clandestinely. They didn’t have to talk about it, Tony’s eyes said.

But Stephen took a breath to strengthen himself, and his back straightened.

“I died,” he said very simply. A little shock went through Tony, and there was no way Stephen could have missed it. “Hundreds of times. I lost count, eventually.”

Tony didn’t say anything—showing restraint for once.

“I honed my skills by fighting the same demon over and over and _over_ ,” Stephen continued, and something raw in his throat caught the last of his words and held on. He swallowed past them, met Tony’s eyes. “I felt like I spent _years_ in that loop. I’d grown accustomed to pain and death—and maybe to the thought that I might stay there forever. It was something I chose to do, but…” He shrugged, memories of waking covered in panicked sweat fading the more he spoke about it. “At least I get to wake up from the nightmare. I’m not trapped anymore.”

They left a pregnant pause between them. Tony broke it first.

“D’you need a hug?”

“Don’t make fun of me,” Stephen laughed, breaking eye contact.

“No, I’m totally serious,” Tony insisted. He held his arms out, beckoning Stephen in with his fingers. “We can be Anxiety Bros, or something else I’ll think of later that sounds better.”

“Just because you can conjure a shield now doesn’t mean you get to skip your lessons.”

“Fine. High-five, though?”

With a tiny smirk, Stephen conceded, and gave Tony his long-awaited high-five.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm literally overwhelmed with the response from you wonderful readers. You make my heart feel so big. Thank you, so so much.


	9. breaking news

“So this book is _how_ many years old?” Tony asked, taking a bite out of his toasted sandwich with the Book of Cagliostro in his other hand.

Stephen hadn’t said, and his silence caused Tony to turn and smirk at him.

“This book,” Stephen said, nodding at the text, “is the only source Wong and I have been able to scrounge up with anything relating to the time stone. Out of every book in the Kamar-Taj library, everything in all of the Sanctums, or any private collection of our contacts. If anyone on Earth had knowledge of the stones, they either kept it to themselves or kept it _laughably_ well-hidden.”

“Note to self,” Tony mused out loud through another bite of his sandwich. “When I write my memoir—” Stephen uttered a single hard laugh. “Okay, when I pay someone to write my memoir, I’m putting in a chapter about deadly space rocks and how to get rid of them. Why the hell were ancient people so stingy with their secrets?”

“Maybe they didn’t want them to fall into the wrong hands,” Stephen suggested.

Tony’s face fell, and his frown pinched and deepend. “That didn’t keep it from happening.”

Stephen took a long, slow breath—watched Tony’s expression for any hint of distress.

“Sorry, Doc, spoilers,” Tony growled.

“Don’t worry, I think my timeline is already in shambles,” Stephen admitted, threading both sets of fingers back through his hair. 

“Why d’you say that?” Tony asked, and he stuffed the last bite of his sandwich in his mouth.

“I’m going to know you, Tony,” Stephen said very plainly. “I’ve said it before. When you meet me for the first time, all of this…It’s already happened to me, by then.”

Tony opened his mouth, but nothing came out. So he tried again, and his eyebrows had drawn down into something angrier.

“You were… you’ll be _pretending_ to be an asshole to me?”

“I suppose I will.”

“ _Why_?” Tony yelled suddenly, but he regretted it instantly. He set the book aside in his chair, intensely focused on pacing. “Why didn’t you just come up to me and say ‘Hey, it’s your old buddy Stephen, we spent and/or will spend a long weekend learning spells together.’”

“Knowledge of future events—” Stephen began to warn him, but Tony wasn’t having any of it. He waved a hand at Stephen, shushing him.

“Okay, but _you_ get all the info ahead of time,” Tony argued. “I don’t even get a heads-up from you!”

“If I did,” he said very quietly, “if I managed to tell you everything that we do here in your future, you would never have the reason to come back here to learn to control the stones. If you never had the reason to come back, I would never teach you how. And we create a paradox.”

Tony’s chest rose with a harsh breath, and he pressed a hand to his stitches with a grimace. He frowned, searching Stephen’s face like he was trying to read something written on his forehead.

“So you’re gonna juggle keeping all that a secret,” Tony asked, “ _and_ take on the end of the world?”

“I guess I’ll find out.”

Tony paused, and Stephen tried very hard not to look directly at the growing admiration rising on Tony’s face.

+++

“Stephen!” Wong shouted, rushing through the door from the library. Stephen stood, his nerves electric with foreboding. “Television,” Wong said breathlessly, bending at the waist and gasping for air. “You’ll want to see this.”

He watched the shaky news footage live from Queens. A highrise had blown its top, smoke and flames billowing from thirteen floors up and debris crumbling into the street below. The newscaster, as if reading off a paper that had just been handed to them, said that the explosion had happened only moments ago—emergency vehicles were en route, he could hear the sirens over the newscaster’s voice.

“Again,” the reporter said, and the camera swung to bring her into focus. “We’ve been told that witnesses saw the Spider-Man enter the building just after the explosion. He entered the tenth floor through a window, but hasn’t reappeared—”

“Oh, no,” Stephen groaned.

“It doesn’t look good,” Wong murmured, eyes flicking rapidly from Stephen to the TV.

“I can’t go,” Stephen said, voice thin and rushed. “No, what if Tony sees the same broadcast?” 

“Stark is in Geneva this weekend,” Wong reminded him. Stephen pressed a worried palm to his forehead, tried to smooth back his hair as if seeing better through his bangs would help (so busy keeping track of one Tony Stark that he’d misplaced the other one).

“Dammit,” Stephen breathed, and his face settled into something terrible and grim. Without another word, he had slipped on the sling ring and was through the portal into a burning building in Queens.

“Peter!” Stephen cried into the inferno. 

The structure groaned around him, and somewhere nearby, a window shattered. The cloak raised him inches off the ground, and with a hasty movement, he dismissed the portal back to the Sanctum—no need to let the fire spread.

“I’m fine!” Peter’s voice came through the noise of the fire, the howling of the sirens below. “Just… just a second!”

Stephen rolled his eyes, and he followed the sounds of shifting rubble and frustration. He found Spider-Man just as the too-skinny, sunny-smile teenager literally lifted a steel construction beam off of himself. He had tossed it aside with a deafening clang before Stephen was even close enough to attempt to help, and only succeeded in catching Peter as he tried to walk it off in a daze.

“What the hell are you doing in here? Do you have any idea what Tony would do to me if I let you get burned alive?” Stephen asked, pulling Peter to his feet.

“If he’s so worried—” Peter groaned, finding his balance, “—why does he keep sending _you_?”

“I told you it’s complicated,” Stephen grumbled.

The eyes of Peter’s suit narrowed suspiciously. “Uh- _huh_ ,” he drew it out.

Something rumbled overhead, and Peter’s head shot up—raising his eyes to the ceiling just as the cracks overhead split.

Stephen threw his hands up, and a shield exploded over the both of them. Concrete and office furniture rained down, and Stephen growled between tightly-clenched teeth to keep the shield solid past shaking hands.

“This whole thing is coming down!” Peter shouted, and Stephen had to let the shield dissipate so he could grab onto the teenager’s wrist and keep him from dashing off. Peter tugged his arm, but Stephen doubled down—a glowing orange ring around his wrist matched Peter’s strength, anchored him down. 

“Exactly!” Stephen spat “You’re getting out of here _right now_!”

“There’s still people in here, Mister Strange! Let go!”

It struck Stephen oddly somewhere in his chest. The desperate notes in Peter’s voice, his feet digging in and scrambling against Stephen’s arcane grip. 

So he let go (even Peter seemingly hadn’t expected compliance, as he stumbled backward just a step or two from the lost connection).

“Okay,” Stephen said. With a few short movements of his hands, he had magically shoved the rubble that had come down around them, reconfiguring his shields. “Where are they, Peter?”

+++

Peter ruffled the towel through his hair, munching on the baby carrots Wong had brought out when he and Stephen had arrived through a second portal.

“I should institute a ‘no strays’ policy for you, Stephen,” Wong muttered, but he patted Peter kindly on the shoulder as he passed the chair. A quiet smirk hovered on Stephen’s mouth, tired but content.

“Thanks for letting me use the shower, Mister Strange,” Peter said around a full mouth, plopping down into a chair. “May would probably actually kill me if I came back smelling like smoke.”

“Your aunt,” Stephen began, shaking the ash out of the cloak. “Does she know?”

“Oh yeah,” Peter groaned—obviously a point of recent and dire contention. “I kinda promised I wouldn’t do any seriously dangerous stuff until she figured out how many years I’m gonna be grounded for, but…”

Stephen laid a hand on top of Peter’s head (the boy ceased all movement, as if Stephen had miraculously found an off switch). “That was very selfless today, Peter. _Stupid_ ,” he added, wincing at just _how_ stupid it had been. “But good.”

Peter grinned up at him, settled further into the chair, and continued gleefully snacking.

And then Stephen had a strange feeling that he was forgetting something. Panic seized his gut, and he quickly asked: “Peter, what time is it?”

“Uh,” the boy began, pulling out his phone (the background, Stephen noticed, was a badly photoshopped picture of the Iron Man armor with Peter’s head instead of Tony’s). “Almost two.”

Stephen took a sharp breath. How had he completely lost track of time? “Wong, can you keep Mister Parker entertained for ten minutes?”

Wong gave Stephen a hurried nod—he’d been caught up in the excitement, too.

He could see why Tony would have taken a shine to Peter, Stephen mused as he all but ran up the stairs to the artifact room. He was so much like Tony.

“Hey, there you are,” he heard Tony’s voice as he entered the room. The man’s arms were wide in an oversized shrug. “Getting sick of me, or something?”

Stephen smirked, and opened his mouth to counter with something acerbic, when Tony held up a single finger to stop him in his tracks.

“Hold on. Is something on fire?” He narrowed his eyes at Stephen, a dangerous half smirk on his lips. “Wong burning dinner again?”

Stephen betrayed himself with the smallest flick of his eyes—part of the sleeve of his robe had been singed in the fire, and his boots were still flecked with ash.

“Wait, Stephen, were _you_ in a fire?” Tony pursued loudly, stepping up into Stephen’s space. Suddenly very close, holding Stephen’s arm still so he could see just where the sleeve had been burned.

Tony was all of a sudden conducting a thorough search of Stephen’s person. His other wrist had been captured, turning his arm over just to check. Sweeping his eyes over Stephen’s chest and collar, and finally taking Stephen’s chin in one hand to turn his face, checking for burns or injuries.

And it happened so quickly, too fast for Stephen to properly gauge exactly what sort of reaction he should be having. He didn’t know what to do with his hands. He balled them cautiously into fists by his side, fingers shaking just enough to show. 

Stephen realized suddenly that he was reacting whether he liked it or not—there was an unmistakable burning heat spreading through his face and neck and ears faster than the fire in the Queens high rise. 

Stephen Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, Protector of the New York Sanctum, was blushing.

And Tony noticed—how could he not? His searching eyes ceased their movement completely, locked on Stephen’s face, and he _had_ to have seen the color rising in his usually pale complexion. Tony’s hands flitted away, and he cleared his throat before taking a respectful step back.

“Well, you look all right,” Tony mumbled, waving a hand in an absent motion as if it would explain everything. 

Stephen swallowed past whatever was blocking his words, and he nodded. “I, um… I’m sorry I was late,” he managed to croak.

“You should be, young man,” Tony chided him—he brushed off the incident (whatever the hell that had been) with a joke. “How am I supposed to learn anything around here?”

Five minutes later, Stephen came hopping back down the stairs to rejoin Peter and Wong in the foyer. He wondered absently what exactly Wong would have considered “entertaining” as he rounded back into their presence.

“Sorry,” he began to say, only to find both of them turned to stare at him. Peter looking at him with his head half-cocked in question, and Wong with his face in his hand, shaking his head. Stephen froze in place, and the confusion piled heavily on his brow.

“Was that Mister Stark on the phone?” Peter asked.

Stephen looked from Peter to Wong, even more confused than before.

“Oh, uh, sorry. I can hear super good,” Peter admitted, pressing his fingers together awkwardly and looking anywhere but at the red-faced sorcerer. “I should probably go now,” he added in an even faster cadence, and he grabbed his things from the floor before either of them could stop him. “Say hi to Mister Stark for me!”


	10. time after time

“We’ve been going over the book for six days,” Stephen said over his shoulder to Wong, who had decided to sit in on the lesson. “The only thing I can think to do is practice the configurations for the Eye and hope that it can trigger something with the stone in the gauntlet.”

“He’s shown potential,” Wong said, took a seat and waited for the appointed time. “Incredible potential. If he applied himself, he could be a stronger sorcerer than either of us. But,” he added as Stephen’s mouth twisted into a smirk, “if he can’t confront what is keeping him from controlling the stone, all of that will ultimately be of little consequence.”

“He’ll figure it out,” Stephen said quietly, watching the empty space where he’d left Tony twenty-four hours ago. 

Tony popped back into existence with a flash of green, still holding the position Stephen had told him to practice yesterday. 

“Oh, good, Mother Superior’s here,” Tony said, breaking formation and waving at Wong. “We’re being _so_ good, aren’t we, Stephen?”

“You?” Stephen scoffed—and, with a shrug, Tony had to admit that he didn’t seem the type to behave.

Their laughter echoed in the emptiness of the Sanctum.

“It’s always so quiet in here,” Tony grumbled, waving one of his hands as he spoke. “How can you guys focus?” He snapped, and pointed at Stephen. “Wizards still listen to music, right?”

A single one of Stephen’s eyebrows shot up. “We’re sorcerers, not _Amish_.”

Tony fought with a giggle, waved him off. “I need some pump-up music, something to get me in the zone. Whose phone is that?” He circled past Stephen and to the desk—hidden amongst the myriad notes and books was a practically ancient smartphone, and Tony snatched it up before anyone could protest. He waggled it in the air. “Anyone?”

Wong crossed his arms. “Mine,” he said succinctly.

Tony smirked, whirled away as he scrolled through the phone. “All right, class, let’s see what kind of taste in music our friend Wong has.”

He pressed play and turned the volume up.

The unmistakable first chords of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time” came lilting out of the phone’s tinny speakers.

Stephen had a very hard time holding in his laugher, even going to far as to physically cross his arms to keep his lungs from bursting. Tony turned—so slowly—to face them again, a huge and disbelieving grin on his face.

Wong only shrugged. “I appreciate a strong female lead vocal.”

Stephen couldn’t help it anymore, and a line of laughter came spilling out of him. “Not exactly ‘pump-up’ music,” he said, wiping idly at one of his eyes.

“No, no,” Tony urged, setting the phone aside as the vocals came in. “I can totally work with this.”

And without warning, Tony was dancing. Not full-swing, ballroom elegance—his movements were bouncing, freeform, maybe even childish. Something to keep the beat, something to get him moving (even Stephen was tapping his foot, following the movements).

Getting warmed up, he summoned his shields effortlessly, blue and shimmering like the arc reactor. His movements were mechanical while still being fluid and graceful. He tossed one of the shields, hard, like a frisbee at the far wall—it made a terrible wooshing noise and dissipated completely right before it would have lodged itself in the wall.

Tony turned, grinned, and winked. Heat flared up in Stephen’s ears.

And suddenly, it all made sense. It wasn’t like being punched in the gut, or struck by lightning. The world didn’t do somersaults around them, and there was no barrage of fireworks. Nothing changed at all. He just _realized_.

Stephen realized, just as simply as he might realize that he left the oven on—he was in love with Tony Stark.

“Oh, no,” Stephen groaned. He buried his face in both of his hands, knowing exactly why his insides were burning. This had just become _far_ more complicated.

“You okay over there, Doc?” Tony asked, still shaking in time to the beat as he moved his hands in the configuration for the Eye of Agamotto.

Stephen dropped his hands to his side and nodded weakly. He tried a smile, but it felt insincere (or too sincere). “Fine. Looks like the music helps.”

“Yeah, but next time,” Tony suggested, waltzing up to Stephen with a grin, “let’s get something a little more hardcore than Cyndi Lauper.”

Stephen’s heart launched hard into the back of his throat, forced him into silence in their proximity. Tony tilted his head, his smirk fading just slightly.

“You think it’s gonna be too distracting?”

“No, Tony,” Stephen said quickly to beat the chiming of the clock in the hall. “Whatever helps.”

Tony had barely disappeared before Stephen whirled around to face Wong, his face gone terribly white.

“Wong,” he said urgently, “I have a problem.”

And Wong just laughed. “I’ve noticed. For about two weeks.”

Stephen didn’t know whether to look offended or impressed. He settled on worried. “What… what am I supposed to do?”

“The stone is the priority, Stephen. It has been since this started,” Wong said, and he strode up alongside his friend to place a hand on Stephen’s shoulder. “You can figure the rest out afterwards.”

Stephen nodded, but even as Wong left his side, Stephen remained soldered to the spot where he’d had his revelation. He stayed there for quite some time, his head in his hand and fighting the storm clouds that had gathered in his mind.

He was in trouble.

+++

Stephen tried to forget about it. He honestly tried. He told himself that there were more important things at stake right now than his own feelings. Especially feelings about world-famous Tony Stark; genius billionaire Tony Stark; currently-engaged Tony Stark.

For three whole days, for ten minutes at a time, Stephen Strange was able to almost competently ignore what every part of his body was screaming at him (lights flashing, signs ten feet tall in red lettering) and focus on the rituals from the Book of Cagliostro. Anecdotes from Stephen’s own use of the time stone, and the configurations of the gestures associated with them. 

But Stephen had never been a very good liar.

“You can talk to me, y’know.”

Stephen looked up sharply, coming out of a fog of deep thought to see Tony standing in front of him, hands placed firmly akimbo and looking down at him like a disapproving mother.

Stephen closed his eyes, uttered a single quiet laugh. He gathered his thoughts and opened his eyes.

“I’ve been keeping track,” he said at last, and held up a few sheafs of paper from his desk. “It’s been forty-seven days since you first appeared. Nearly a month and a half for me.”

Tony looked off into the middle distance to start his calculations, and Stephen just let him.

“That’s eight hours for me,” Tony said suddenly. “Wow, is that all? Time flies when you’re training to save the world, I guess.”

Stephen smirked, but there was more sadness than mirth in it. “Universe,” he corrected.

“Okay,” Tony said, and he swung a chair around to take a seat beside Stephen. “Time’s all out of whack for us. But we had that figured out on loop number two. So, what’s with the long face?”

Stephen laughed, dry and a bit empty, and pinched the bridge of his nose. “We’ve spent the same amount of time together, but everything is continuous for you. I have to spend hours between visits planning what I’m going to say so I don’t waste any of the limited time I have to teach you, and then wondering what you’re going to do _this_ time to throw those plans out the window.”

They shared a low smile.

“Well, I know I’m hard to work with,” Tony admitted. “I get that a lot, actually.”

“I wonder why,” Stephen said dryly. He sat slightly forward in his chair, leaning on his knees and just that much closer to Tony. “You really have a knack for this, you know. If you ever get bored of saving the universe someday, you’d make a great sorcerer.”

Tony’s wry grin pulled up on one side of his mouth, and he levered his free hand up to land on Stephen’s shoulder. Squeezed, and gave him a light shake.

Stephen took a breath, but didn’t let it out again. He wondered if he was as ridiculously obvious as he felt (he very much hoped not, but Tony was a very smart man). So he all but scrambled out of his chair and extricated himself from the situation alarmingly fast.

By the time he’d turned back, the clock had finished chiming the hour. It was something for the Stephen of tomorrow to deal with. Another few hours to attempt to plan how to handle Tony Stark.

+++

Stephen was standing in the Sanctum’s library when he heard footsteps approaching from behind. He turned, book in hand, expecting to find Wong or even Peter coming to interrupt his studies again.

He hadn’t expected Tony.

He also hadn’t expected Tony to knock the book out of his hand and mash their faces together at the mouths.

To be perfectly honest, Stephen didn’t put up much of a fight.

Tony pulled back just an inch, didn’t say a word. He didn’t have to. He just winked, and then he hit his knees on the ground in front of Stephen.

There was a horrible moment where Stephen forgot human speech—it must have had something to do with Tony working his fly open.

The suddenness of Tony’s attack pressed Stephen back into the books, and his hand desperately sought any anchor to keep him standing (his knees certainly weren’t strong enough for that, not with what Tony was doing with his mouth down there), scattering books and scrolls to the floor as he tried to hold on.

Stephen’s head tilted back, fought for breath, lost all focus and closed his eyes against the sudden spinning of the world. All he could do was fit his fingers to the back of Tony’s skull, hold him there and try to form enough syllables with his own useless mouth to get Tony’s name from between his lips.

And that was when he bolted awake. 

Eyes snapped open, staring at the ceiling of his bedroom, covered in sweat and heaving in breath like he’d just woken from one of his nightmares. He lay there for silent, humiliating minutes as the dream slipped away.

“Oh, _no_ ,” Stephen groaned again, holding both of his hands flat to his burning face. 

He took a very, _very_ cold shower before getting dressed.

Stephen had hoped he would be able to get ahold of himself (he was a grown man, dammit) by the time ten-to-two rolled around. 

But as soon as Tony appeared, still looking concernedly up and away to where Stephen had fled yesterday, everything turned to a jumble of crossed wires in his head. Tony realized that Stephen had changed position, and he stood with a hitch—hand to his stitches—and found Stephen’s eyes again.

“Hey, Doc, you okay?”

Stephen clamped his jaw tight and battled to remember how to nod. 

He couldn’t even meet Tony’s eye. He tried to tell himself (as he had several times over the last handful of hours) that it was just some meaningless dream, the meanderings of a sleeping brain. But instead he was lost staring at some point just to the left of Tony’s head. Was he a _goddamn teenager_? 

“What, do I have something on my face?” Tony asked.

“Tony,” Stephen all but barked, and he regretted it instantly. But he still couldn’t look directly at him. “Sorry. Just… just practice your gestures. Project.”

When Stephen had occupied with scrawling notes in his shaking handwriting, it allowed him to hide his red-faced embarrassment from his pupil. And he missed the way Tony watched the back of his head, humor bleeding easily into concern. 

“I’m not stupid, Stephen,” Tony mumbled, his eyes on how his own hands formed the odd, arcane movements.

Stephen stilled, but didn’t turn. 

“I know,” was all he said.

They didn’t speak for the rest of the loop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one took forever to write the way I wanted it, I'm sorry about the wait! Hope it's still living up to expectations! Thanks so much to everyone for being awesome!


	11. miss potts

Stephen picked up his phone and turned off the music, and at the silence, Tony turned with an inquisitive look.

“Hey, what gives? It was getting to the good part.”

“You’ve only got a few minutes left,” Stephen reminded him. “And you’re dancing more than you’re practicing.”

“So, what, my music privileges are revoked?”

Stephen tried not to smile, but failed. “Maybe we need a different tactic.”

Tony threw up his hands, an aggravated growl leaving his frame. “Come on! If you keep switching things up every couple minutes, I’m never gonna get this!”

“You’ll get it, Tony,” Stephen tried to say, but Tony’s furious pacing was louder than his encouragement.

“Yeah, I keep hearing that,” Tony spat. He rubbed his free hand through his hair vigorously, angrily. 

He paced for long seconds, and all Stephen could do was watch his feet (couldn’t drag his eyes up, not even after days).

“I hate this,” Tony finally snapped. “I hate this stupid Oven Mitt of Destiny, I hate that I’m stuck in these goddamn loops, I hate that you won’t _look at me_ anymore!”

At the last, Stephen’s encouraging platitudes died on his tongue, and he was left in silent shock. And it only seemed to infuriate Tony further, pacing growing quicker.

“You said I’m cut out for this, but it’s kicking my ass! You’re being extra vague and mysterious and telling me to _project_ and _feel it_ , but what if I can’t?!”

Tony clenched his fist, the one with the gauntlet, and slammed it down on the nearest table.

Not only did the table explode in a shower of splinters, but a wave of energy blasted outward from the gauntlet—the purple stone glowing like a star. The glass housing on three of the nearest artifact cases shattered, books went flying off of shelves, and Stephen was fired backwards by the explosion.

He hit the desk somewhere in his lower back, took the impact, and crumbled to the floor amongst his now-jumbled and useless notes.

“Stephen!” he heard Tony cry from across the room, and before he could even try to get up, he felt Tony pulling at him.

“I’m okay,” Stephen assured him, even as he noticed the little cuts on Tony’s face—must have been from the glass exploding around him. Maybe it was because he’d been rattled from the explosion, but Stephen didn’t even try to stop himself from wiping at the longest trail of blood on Tony’s cheek. “Are you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony said quickly, his breath tight and urgent. With Tony’s help, Stephen had pulled himself up into a sitting position in a nest of his notes. “Holy shit, was that _me_?” Tony breathed.

Stephen nodded, and his eyes fell to the gauntlet—quiet now, nothing unusual about it at all, considering that it had just tried to blow him up.

“I don’t even know how—” And Tony stopped like his brain had pulled the emergency brake for his mouth. He stared Stephen hard in the face, eyes darting in sudden and deep thought. “I was angry. I was _pissed_.”

“Good,” Stephen said, at which Tony scoffed.

“Good? I could’ve blown this whole place sky-high.”

“If emotion is what helps you use the stones, then use it,” Stephen said. “Just focus on the time stone, whatever emotion gets you to break this loop.”

Tony finally leaned away from Stephen, shaking the anger out of his limbs with a hard exhalation. 

“I’ll have alcohol and swabs for those cuts when you get back,” Stephen assured him, and he stood, leaned on the desk.

“And a bourbon,” Tony called, leaning his head back to get more air. 

Stephen watched Tony turn his head to look at him as the hour began to chime in the hall. Tony smiled, and then he was gone.

When Stephen turned, he found Peter Parker standing in the doorway of the artifact room, both hands clamped to his mouth so hard that his knuckles had gone white. Stephen froze, and his insides turned to ice.

“He just disappeared!” Peter squeaked from between his fingers. “What the hell?!”

Stephen could almost feel his timeline being pulled to literal shreds. Peter must have seen that desperate look in his face, because the boy immediately backed away, rattling out a string of barely-connected words.

“I’m sorry!” he tried to defend himself, both hands held out in front of himself as if to stop an onslaught. “I was outside—I heard the explosion—I just wanted to make sure—”

And Stephen decided that he was too exhausted to even try to explain any of this away with a lie. “Oh, it’s useless at this point,” Stephen said out loud. “Let’s take a walk, Peter.”

+++

They took a portal to the park, and from there they walked in large circles for what felt like hours (likely closer to one; Stephen had gained a very accurate sense for just how long ten minutes was). Stephen told him everything—well, _almost_ everything; nothing about Stephen’s personal feelings, just the facts. Tony Stark was trapped in a loop, and Stephen was trying to help him get out. When it all came down to it, it really was oddly simple.

Peter listened. At one moment inconsolably excited, and at the next, overwhelmingly worried. He was, for once, unusually cooperative and taciturn. He nodded when appropriate, and limited his questions to clarifications. Stephen had to admit, sometimes Peter could seem much older than he was. He appreciated it, but didn’t say as much.

“Now do you understand why you _can’t_ say anything to Tony?” Stephen asked.

Peter nodded, though slowly. “I can’t believe there’s two Mister Starks running around at the same time,” he mused. “Hey, what would happen if they met?”

“They _absolutely_ can _not_ , Peter.” His voice was thin, horrified at even the prospect of the possible paradoxes. “You know him well enough to know that if he got a whiff of this, he’d be at the Sanctum in a second, trying to do just that.”

Peter smiled, just a little thing. “You must know him pretty good, by now, huh?”

Stephen’s shoulders fell after a moment of thought. “I know one version of him. The one that you know, he’s a stranger to me. And I am to him, and we’re going to keep it that way until…”

“Until?”

“Until whatever happens, happens.” Stephen ran a weary hand over his face. “Promise, Peter.”

The boy held up one of his hands, the other over his heart. “It sounds super important. So, yeah. I swear I won’t say anything.”

From somewhere in the coming and going of the crowd, Stephen heard a _very_ familiar laugh. It struck him in the chest like he’d literally been shocked, and his head shot up in something close to terror.

Walking right at them, accompanied by his fiancee, was Tony Stark. Current timeline Tony Stark, grinning and happy and slowly coming their way.

With only a little “hey!” of protestation on the teenager’s part, Stephen pulled Peter off the walking path and to the space between trees.

“Go home, Peter,” Stephen insisted _very_ quickly, and without warning pushed Peter through a portal and back to his bedroom in Queens.

Stephen had his hand out, ready to create another portal back to the Sanctum. But, damn him, something made him turn back around.

Tony didn’t look that much different, all things considered. He looked happy. Standing next to Pepper Potts, holding her hand, strolling along in Central Park like he didn’t have a single better thing to do than spend the day with her. 

Tony paused mid-sentence and reached into a pocket, where he pulled out his phone and excused himself with a kiss to Pepper’s cheek.

Stephen had never felt this awful tightness in his chest before, and he was sure he never wanted to feel it again. If he had to wager a guess, he’d have said it was probably agony, but he hated to sound so dramatic (even to himself). Tony Stark was perfectly happy without him. It wasn’t a surprise, but it hurt to see it in action nonetheless.

“It’s okay to ask him for a picture,” came a woman’s voice to Stephen’s right, and he jumped at the sudden presence of Pepper Potts at his elbow.

She smiled, surprisingly kind. She leaned in, almost conspiratorially. “He won’t tell anyone, but he actually loves taking pictures with fans.”

Stephen almost laughed. A _fan_ of Tony Stark. He never thought he’d see the day that it would describe him to a tee.

“He, ah…” Stephen began, crossed his arms self-consciously. “He saved my life. Six years ago, the attack on New York.” Pepper’s smile faded, only slightly. “I’m sure he’s saved a lot of lives, I don’t expect him to remember _one_ , but…” He tried very hard not to turn and look at Tony, the voice he’d come to know so well still audible over the distance between them. “I wouldn’t want to interrupt your walk.”

“I think the conference call kinda already did that,” she said with a shrug.

He almost wished that she wasn’t so kind. Then it might not hurt so much. But she smiled again, and he couldn’t hate her for it.

“He’s lucky to have you, Miss Potts,” Stephen said, a little smile of his own coming to life on his face.

She laughed, rolled her eyes in a way that Stephen was very familiar with (almost as if that expression came hand in hand with dealing with Tony Stark). 

“I get that a lot,” she said. Pepper held out her hand, and he took it. “Nice to meet you…”

“Stephen,” he said without thinking.

“Stephen,” she repeated. “Maybe next time.”

He was gone before Tony had finished his phone call, not daring to push his luck any further than he already had, that day.

Stephen tried to busy himself with cleaning. Using simple repair spells on the glass to rearrange the cases, reshelving the books with a catalogue spell Wong had taught him, using a gust of wind to funnel the dust out through an open window.

But it wasn’t enough. Stephen fell heavily into Tony’s chair, cradled his head on one of his hands.

Tony was so close to figuring out how to control the gauntlet. He’d activated the power stone simply by getting angry enough—maybe some kind of empathetic link between the wearer and the stones? Soon enough, maybe within the next few loops, Tony could have complete control of the time stone and end the time trap for good.

And then this—whatever _this_ was—would be over. Stephen’s timeline would continue on as normal until the inciting incident that would bring the fate of the universe into their hands. And with Future Tony having the knowledge to control the gauntlet, he would save the universe, marry the love of his life, and move on.

How had he let this happen? He should have known better. Should have had more control.

Before he could wallow in any more self-pity, the cloak came rushing into the room and wrapped itself comfortingly around him. At least it got a chuckle out of him. And after another moment, he was able to pull himself back to his feet and get back to work.

+++

Stephen didn’t have a glass of bourbon waiting for Tony when he reappeared, but he did have the medical supplies as promised.

“C’mon, what’s a guy gotta do to get a drink around here?” Tony asked as he threw himself down into his chair, smirking even as Stephen dabbed the peroxide to the cuts on Tony’s face.

“A guy can wait until his doctor’s done with him,” Stephen murmured, focused on cleaning the wounds.

So that’s what Tony did, even keeping the quips to a minimum. Stephen did have to tape some gauze over the deepest cut, but assured Tony it probably wouldn’t scar. He even managed to get Tony to pull up his shirt to check on the stitches while he was in doctor mode.

“Not gonna spill my guts out anytime soon?” Tony asked. He resituated his shirt and leaned back in his chair.

“It’s not my best work,” Stephen admitted, and he turned away to his desk and occupied himself with something there. “But it should hold.”

Stephen turned back around, a glass in each hand with dark red liquid sloshing in either. He handed one to Tony, who sniffed at it with something almost like disdain.

“Okay, I hate to ask… What’s the vintage?”

“ _Very_ recent,” Stephen answered, settling down into the chair in front of him.

“Well, what vineyard, then?”

Stephen shrugged around a rising blush. “Um. The kind that comes in a box.”

“ _Stephen_ ,” Tony all but gasped, absolutely affronted. 

“Do you know how expensive bourbon is?” Stephen challenged.

“You didn’t get _this_ at a thrift store, too, did you?” Tony balked.

And Stephen burst into welcome laughter, all the tension of the past days seeping easily out of him in warm and familiar company. 

Tony held out his glass with a worried shrug. Stephen clinked his glass to Tony’s, and they drank. Tony did his best not to spit it out.


	12. emotional

“Absolutely not, Peter,” Stephen said without looking up from his book. 

“Wait, what? How d’you know what I’m even gonna ask?” 

He had (literally) swung in three minutes ago, still in his spider suit and perched on top of one of the artifact cases.

“I’m not letting you sit in on a lesson. I thought we went over this already,” Stephen sighed, and he finally glanced upward with eyes narrowed. “Don’t you have something you’re doing for the science fair?”

“Grounded,” Peter murmured, fiddling with the web mechanism on his right wrist.

“Well, you’re doing a great job on the whole ‘grounded’ thing, so far,” Stephen replied, snapping the book shut.

“Why did he wanna know that I’m okay?” Peter asked, dangling to look down at Stephen. “I mean, it’s _this_ Mister Stark that sent you out to find me the first time, right?”

The sorcerer held his face in one of his hands. “Yes. And I can’t tell you.”

“Ugh,” Peter groaned, and he flopped down on top of the case. “Y’know, I don’t know how, but you make time travel so boring.”

Stephen smirked when he knew Peter wasn’t looking.

“Does he ask you to do other stuff for him, too?” Peter asked to the ceiling, waving an arm in listless boredom. “Like, his laundry? Do you cook him dinner? Watch him while he sleeps?”

“Peter,” Stephen said—but it was too late. He could already feel the warmth in his ears, and it only took the work of a moment for Peter to see it too.

“Wait,” Peter began gleefully, peering down at him. “Do you have a _crush_ on Mister Stark?” he gasped, tearing the mask off his face to reveal his excited, boyish face—already grinning in full.

Pinching the bridge of his nose in aggravation did very little to hide the wildfire spreading in Stephen’s face.

“Oh my _God_ , you _do_!” Peter chimed happily. 

“Aren’t you grounded?” Stephen bit.

“Hey, you should probably just tell him,” Peter suggested, and he hopped down to hang on the edge of the case to meet Stephen eye to eye. “He seems like the kinda guy that doesn’t get hints.”

“I’m not taking _romantic advice_ from a _literal child_ ,” Stephen muttered embarrassedly. “Go find a purse-snatcher and teach _him_ something. And don’t—” He was going to say ‘don’t tell Tony’, but having forbidden all contact concerning Stephen already, it seemed a bit like overkill to be so specific.

Peter opened his mouth to protest, but Stephen held a severe finger in the air between them, a gesture and subsequent hard stare that broached no argument.

So Peter zipped his lips with a fluid movement, even though they parted a moment later in a grin, and pulled the mask back over his face. He was back out the window in a flash.

+++

Even with having activated the power stone, the air of self-congratulation didn’t last very long. Tony could neither replicate the results nor figure out what might trigger his ability to control the other stones.

They ran through days of drills, testing different configurations of Tony’s fingers in myriad spells. Tony even tried smashing something again, and might have if Stephen hadn’t grabbed the hand with the gauntlet before it had cloven into his desk.

Tony’s good spirits were draining away more quickly than they had during the entire time Stephen had known him. Laughing over glasses of terrible box wine had turned almost immediately into sniped comments and bitter jabs. Stephen tried not to let it get to him.

There were sane moments, calm moments when Tony was still Tony—the Tony that Stephen knew, the one that smiled and told you how bad your joke was; the one that danced and tried every third loop to get Stephen to join him (he didn’t)—and Stephen found himself just staring. Watching, more than just observation for the sake of the lesson. And if Tony noticed, he hadn’t said anything about it.

On day sixty, Stephen knew that there was something immediately wrong when Tony didn’t say anything when he reappeared. He simply went straight into the last movements they had been practicing and didn’t even look up at him.

Barely a minute of silence had passed before Tony threw up his hands and paced away from him.

“Tony?” Stephen asked, stood out of his chair to follow.

“What is it with me, huh?” Tony growled, clenching the fist of the gauntlet hard enough to produce a squeal of metal on metal. He whirled back around to face Stephen, and there was a new darkness there. “One minute I’m blasting you across the room with this thing, and the next it’s… it’s _mocking me_ , Stephen.”

“It’s an inanimate object,” Stephen drawled. 

“You’re an inanimate object,” Tony snarked. 

“Please,” Stephen sighed, a weariness coming to his face, “can we not argue?”

“No, come on! You wanted emotion, I’m giving it to you!”

“You’re not focused—”

“Oh, but you didn’t want focus,” Tony crowded suddenly in on him, stepping up like he was ready to start a fight. “You told me that whenever I’ve gotten something _right_ , it was because I was happy to know Pete was alive, or pissed at this thing. I gotta find out whatever _raw fucking emotion_ lets me get the hell out of here, because practice isn’t cutting it!”

There was an indigation in Stephen that even his feelings for Tony couldn’t stop, and he stood his ground. “I’ve been trying to help you—”

“And we’ve got a pair of gaudy shields and one pile of splinters to show for it! I’m running myself ragged and I can’t even _do_ anything about it!”

“It’s okay,” Stephen tried to reassure him—both of his hands held up between them. “It took me months to control any of my spells, and all that practice in the Dark Dimension to master it. You haven’t even been at this for a _day_ yet.”

“Maybe the universe doesn’t have a _day_ , Stephen!” Tony bit back, pressing forward threateningly until Stephen’s hands were physically holding him back.

Stephen took a breath through his nose, changed tactics. “You’re smart, Tony. Smarter than I am—” At which Tony scoffed angrily, looking away. “If anyone could learn to do this in a day, it’s you.”

The frustration built behind Tony’s clenched jaw, and his gaze reared back around to pin Stephen, almost violently. He surged forward, a challenge, pressing against the barrier of Stephen’s hands until they were practically nose to nose.

“And what, if it takes me months, you’re gonna spend… _years_ coming back to this one spot for ten minutes a day to babysit me?”

There was a dour seriousness in Stephen’s eyes, but there was something else there, too. Determination, trust, but even above all of that was _adoration_ —plain and simple and absolutely clear.

“Yes. If that’s what it takes.”

Tony hadn’t expected that, if the dumbfounded look taking root in his eyes was anything to go on. A syllable tripped off of his tongue, but his mouth hung open with words unfinished. It turned from dumbfounded to embarrassment, and very quickly right into anger.

“Well, aren’t you just _so_ selfless?” Tony snapped, very quiet (almost as though he didn’t want it to be heard).

“Don’t do this.” Stephen’s voice was tight, hollow.

“Stephen Strange, Earth’s High-And-Mightiest Hero,” Tony went on, like a rolling stone that had gained too much momentum, couldn’t stop if he had wanted to. “Well, Mister Hero, at the end of the universe, I have to sit there and watch you turn to _ash_.” His strong voice was suddenly raw, half-caught, but he fought against it through a clenched jaw. “I get you killed because I couldn’t stand up and fight. So, what does that make me, huh? Worth your time, now?”

His eyes were glassy, haunted, full of threatening tears. Stephen could feel him shaking against his hands.

So, he was going to die. That’s how the time stone was going to end up in that gauntlet. All things considered, it didn’t surprise him. Maybe he’d been expecting it to come out sooner or later. Honestly, it was a weight off of his shoulders—Stephen even felt himself relax for the first time in days.

Tony seemed to suddenly realize exactly what he had said, because the look on his face evolved very quickly into fear. “I shouldn’t have said—” he tried to verbally backpedal.

“It’s okay,” Stephen said softly. “I… Funny enough, I think I’ve known for a while that that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”

“I messed everything up,” Tony cut back in, anything to keep Stephen from talking. “I shouldn’t have even come back here in the first place. The timeline’s shot to shit, I got you involved before I even met you. Hell, when you said you’ve seen millions of possible timelines, I bet you never saw this one happening.” He winced. “Probably shouldn’t have said that one, either.”

“Tony,” Stephen said suddenly. It was enough to cut through Tony’s panicked stream of words, but Stephen couldn’t find anything to fill the silence with. It was enough to lock their eyes together in just one single moment of absolute silence—no buzzing thoughts of stones or time loops, no noise of explosions or screaming (or laughter or tears). Finally just looking at each other, man to man.

Well, he was going to die anyway. If this wasn’t the right time, then there _was_ no right time.

“Tony, if there’s millions of possible timelines,” Stephen began so quietly he wasn’t even sure he’d said it out loud (his hands shaking against Tony’s chest), “maybe there’s one where you and I—” He found himself cut off by the emotional blockage in his throat, shook his head. 

Tony tried a laugh, and it only forced the tears out of his eyes. “What, don’t have this conversation? Make up and forget about it?”

Stephen wiped a hand at his eye, didn’t let himself cry. Still shaking his head, he somehow managed to smile.

“Fall in love.”

There was a long second where Stephen simply got to enjoy the look of pure shock on Tony Stark’s face. It was enough to pull a sad little laugh out of Stephen’s throat.

“Stephen—” Tony tried to say. But the clock was chiming, and before he could even form the next word he was trying to say, there was a flash of green light.

Stephen’s hands dropped to his side, with Tony’s resistance against them gone. And so was all the resistance he had put up against his tears. He blinked, and they came all at once. Quiet, but strong.

But he sucked in a breath, straightened his back, and wiped them away with the back of his hand. Whatever he had started, wherever this would take them tomorrow, he would deal with it then. 

And at noon the next day, the Hulk dropped through the roof of the New York Sanctum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hoo boy, that one hurt a little bit to write. BUT! Semi-important stuff here: I am going to blame any inaccuracies with the following retelling of Infinity War on the fact that the timeline is all kinds of screwy (but I think we all kinda expected that anyway). Thanks again SO MUCH for sticking with me, and I hope you're having as much fun as I am!


	13. meeting mister stark

Wong had brought out the teapot and three cups, one of them held between the shaking hands of Doctor Bruce Banner. Stephen and Wong lingered by the front door, let Banner cool down after his long bout of exposition in silence.

“Wong,” Stephen said, turning sharply. “You have to promise me. If anything happens to me, you have to stay at the Sanctum.”

“We _both_ swore to protect the stone,” Wong protested. 

“We can’t leave the Sanctum without a protector,” Stephen refuted. “And…” He turned to catch Banner in the corner of his eye, and continued in a lower voice: “Someone needs to be here when Tony reappears.”

Wong sagged. “If you haven’t been able to teach him, what makes you believe I’ll have any more luck?”

“If Tony can’t control the stones,” Stephen urged him, his voice sticking just slightly in his throat, “all of this is for nothing. He’s the end game.”

“You’re trusting Tony Stark with the life of every being in the universe?” Wong asked, honestly flabbergasted.

“Completely.” Stephen didn’t miss a beat.

Wong almost laughed. “And trusting me to take care of Stark?”

“Eh,” Stephen waffled. “You’re not my first choice.”

“Okay, Stephen,” Wong finally chuckled. “I’ll stay behind. But for _you_ , not for Stark.”

Stephen sighed, as satisfied with the answer as he probably would ever be. He held out a hand, and Wong enclosed it with both of his own, shaking firmly.

After another minute, Stephen moved from Wong’s side and took the seat in front of Banner, his own hands clasped and held to his lips in thought. Banner looked up, acknowledged him with a nod, and washed a weary hand over his eyes.

“I know it sounds crazy,” Banner said, voice thin (glancing over his shoulder as though expecting this Thanos character to suddenly appear behind him).

“It doesn’t,” Stephen assured him. “Believe me. So, you think his next target is Earth?”

“How can it not be?” Banner asked. “I mean, I thought it was just the mind stone, but I guess yours makes it two, and that’d put it pretty darn high on his list of priorities.”

Wong had been silent almost since he’d returned with an extra set of clothes for Banner, pacing a trough into the foyer floor. He finally came to stop behind Banner’s chair, his jovial face gone very serious.

“This is everything we’ve ever trained for, Stephen,” he said gravely. “Protecting the time stone may very literally rest on our lives today.”

Stephen nodded, a hand clasped over the Eye of Agamotto—he had returned to Kamar-Taj just long enough to grab it. He hadn’t told Wong everything Tony had let slip about the future—certainly not his own death. He figured that he would save Wong the worrying.

“It’s probably in our best interest not to do it alone, though,” Stephen added, looking across at Banner. “If the Hulk can’t take Thanos down, is there anyone on Earth that could?”

Banner shrugged wildly. “If anyone could, don’t you think it’d be the Avengers?”

“He already has two stones,” Wong said, took a sip. “You think the Avengers could stand up to that?”

“Maybe? What other choice do we really have?”

“We’ve got our work set out for us if we’re trying to get all the Avengers in the same room,” Stephen murmured. 

“I’ve been off the planet for—” His face did a painful amount of calculations in a second. “—for a long time. But I still know Tony’s the best place to start,” Banner answered as firmly as he probably could.

“I was afraid you’d say that,” Stephen murmured to himself.

“What?” Banner asked, leaning in just slightly.

“Nothing,” Stephen answered, and he rose almost too quickly out of his chair. The cloak, as though sensing exactly who Stephen was going to see, began trembling at the seams in excitement.

He couldn’t even lie to himself—he was terrified. Even knowing everything that he did, knowing where so many threads were going to lead (and which threads would be severed), Stephen didn’t have complete knowledge of the future. He knew that Thanos would gather all of the stones. He knew that he and Peter were going to die. He knew that Tony would get the gauntlet. It was up to him to get them there, and to whatever happened after.

But first, he had to meet Tony Stark.

Stephen exhaled a nervous breath, and smoothed his hair back in attempts to make himself presentable. Fixed the collar of the cloak and tugged at his sleeves.

He turned to Wong and Banner, and spread his arms out. 

“How do I look?”

Banner just fixed him with a look of wide-eyed and silent confusion. Wong smirked, despite everything, and gave him a thumbs-up. Stephen held up both of his own thumbs, exhaled again, and shook the nervousness out of his limbs.

He stepped out of the portal and into Central Park. There were already several small groups of heads that had turned at the spectacle the portal was making, but they didn’t have time to try and be secretive about this. It was the end of the world, after all (and some small part of him that sounded like Tony corrected: “Universe.”).

Standing directly in front of him, the sparks of his portal shining in their eyes, were Tony and Pepper—him standing just slightly in front of her in a way that looked protective. She was squinting right at Stephen, and he knew instantly that she remembered him. She _had_ been Tony’s personal assistant at one point; she must have been _very_ good with faces.

He almost stopped to warn her, tell her that he was sorry for everything that was going to happen. She really didn’t deserve any of this. But the meeting of their eyes seemed to be enough, and he watched her deflate in anticipation of bad news.

Stephen took a breath, and his gaze moved to Tony, whose jaw was clenched as hard as his fists—ready for a fight.

“Tony Stark,” Stephen said, holding one hand out in front of him—not a threat, _it’s your old pal Stephen_. “I’m Doctor Stephen Strange. I need you to come with me.”

Well, it certainly left something to be desired, as far as first meetings were concerned.

+++

The Infinity Stones. Space, reality, power, soul, mind—and time. Seeing Tony bathed in the green light as Stephen opened the Eye of Agamotto stirred yet another unwanted memory that turned in his gut (that last green flash of light, looking at the shock in Tony’s eyes after he’d just spilled his proverbial soul all over the floor of the Sanctum).

“Okay, so,” Tony extrapolated, waving a hand at the stone against Stephen’s chest, “if he needs all six, why not just toss this one down the garbage disposal?”

Stephen had begun to say something—‘of course not, that would create a paradox that might fracture our timelines into an endless, horrifying recursion’—but only shook his head in reply.

“We swore an oath as sorcerers to protect the stone with our lives,” Wong said for him, circling until he could safely pierce Stephen with a knowing glare.

“And I swore off dairy, but then Ben and Jerry’s named a flavor after me,” Tony bandied, smirking with a shrug—so nonchalant, still.

So, not a vegetarian, but enough of a fan of toasted sandwiches to forgive a slice of swiss here and there. Stephen smirked, and somehow fought past it.

“I’m not giving up the time stone,” Stephen said firmly, and he closed the aperture on the Eye with another fluid movement. “Even if it wasn’t one of our best weapons against Thanos, I don’t think putting it down the kitchen sink would have quite the effect you’re looking for.”

“Or,” Tony cut back in, “think about _this_ , maybe it could be his best weapon against _us_.”

“Not if we do our jobs, Stark,” Stephen said.

“And what exactly _is_ your job, besides making balloon animals?”

“Protecting your reality, _douchebag_.”

It astounded him just how easily he had fallen back into that banter—as if almost twenty-four hours ago he hadn’t just told the man he was looking at that he was in love with him. 

There was something almost like an appreciative smirk on Tony’s face at that.

Stephen realized that Tony had been right, all those days ago—he was pretending to be an asshole, simply because Tony said he _had_ been an asshole. Even with the timeline as fractured and tangled as it was, Stephen knew that he had a responsibility to keep it from folding even further in on itself. He had to keep up this persona that Tony had constructed for him if he was going to keep this going as smoothly as possible toward the end of the world.

And after that moment (was it even a moment?), Banner cut back in and they returned to the brass tacks of the matter. Maintaining control of the time stone, locating the mind stone—and subsequently the Avengers’ recent messy break-up.

Stephen could honestly say that he didn’t keep up with the gossip as much as Wong did, but even he knew that getting Tony on that phone to call Captain America was a tall order. Not only considering the fact that Rogers had (reportedly) left Tony to die in Siberia, but Tony was a stubborn asshole when he really wanted to be (and _that_ was firsthand information).

It might have happened, despite everything, if not for the low and ominous sound drifting through the broken window of the Sanctum.

All four of them moved slowly out into the street, fleeting, horrified glances exchanged as they walked out into a slowly-building pandemonium. Cars reversing down Bleecker Street, people streaking by the open front doors of the Sanctum as they filed out. 

It was almost immediately apparent why. The wind and the noise, blasting down the street at them, overturning trash cans and whipping flags, was emanating from a massive object in the sky overhead. A circular craft, black and with a hole in its center, its engines rumbling as it came to hover lower and lower to the ground.

They had even less time than he’d hoped. 

“Might wanna put that stone in your pocket, Doc,” Tony called, raising his sunglasses to get a better look at the approaching threat.

Only feet away, a car swerved, nearly punching into a light pole, but was snagged at the last moment by a figure in red and blue. 

Stephen felt his chest contract, suddenly and inexplicably, and realized that Peter was just a boy. He was a kid, and he was going to die. And Tony would have to watch.

“Hey, Mister Str—” Peter’s voice caught hard in his throat, seeing both Stephen and Tony at the same time having obviously stopped him in his track. “Mister Stark!” his voice squeaked out.

“P—” Tony cut himself off, furious and worried. “What the hell are you doing here?” he hissed, the chaos continuing to mill around the five of them.

“I—I saw this thing over the Village and—” 

His eyes head turned to Stephen, and it was suddenly obvious _why_. But he still kept his word. 

“I came to help, and I’m helping!”

“Absolutely not!” Tony argued. “You’re going home _right now_!”

“Uh, guys,” Banner cut in meekly. “I think we’ve got bigger things to worry about.”

“He’s right, Stark,” Stephen said plainly. 

And, with a few quick movements of his hands, fingers in delicate position, Stephen summoned a wave of energy and pushed it violently back at the hovering ship. When that wave crashed upon the ship, the ominous noise ceased entirely, and Bleecker Street was suddenly, terribly quiet.

Tony turned to look at him—maybe impressed, maybe incredulous, it was hard to tell with Tony sometimes. And Stephen couldn’t help himself. He smirked, and he winked. Tony rolled his eyes, over-exaggerated, and turned back to the ship. Stephen could have kicked himself, and the way Wong’s eyes were burning into the back of his head told him that _yes_ , he was _that_ obvious.

Two figures emerged from the settling dust from the ship—one huge and hulking, the other worryingly thin and much smaller.

“Okay, you’re here, so let’s get this straight,” Tony said very quickly, turning and nearly poking Peter in the chest. “You keep your distance, keep those alien pricks off the wizard, and if things get bad you web right the hell out of here.”

“Got it, Mister Stark.”

And when Tony had turned back to face the threat at hand, Peter and Stephen looked once at each other, and nodded.

+++

Tony reappeared in a flash of green light, let out a breath he must have been holding in, and looked from side to side in a quick motion. He was alone.

“Stephen?” he called, and his voice carried in an empty Sanctum. His breath came in faster, shorter, and he took five very quick steps out of the artifact room and into the hall. “ _Stephen_?”

A breeze hit him when he entered the hall, and he raised his eyes to look up to the ceiling. A gaping, Hulk-sized hole had been punched into the roof, and into the stairs below him.

“No, no, no,” Tony muttered under his breath, and panic seized in his chest. “STEPHEN?!”

He carefully avoided the hole in the staircase, nearly tripped over the debris, and was almost to the door when he heard movement behind him.

Wong, with a broom in one hand, was looking at him with a sad light in his eye.

Tony swallowed his fear, spoke around it. “Where is he, Wong?”

“Events are already in motion, Stark,” Wong tried to say—but Tony had crossed the room in hard, quick strides until he was face-to-face with the sorcerer.

“Tell me where he is,” Tony said quietly, his voice barely shaking. “Come on, Wong, I know you don’t like me, but—” His next breath hurt in his tightened lungs. “Please.”

Even Wong couldn’t say no to that face. He sagged in defeat, and set the broom aside. “The ship just left the atmosphere; you, Stephen, and the boy with it.”

Tony’s knees shook, but he didn’t falter.

“Dammit,” he hissed, and he broke away from Wong’s side and rushed to the front door. Bleecker Street was a mess of debris, some of it still smoking and crumbling from their fight with Thanos’s emissaries. He looked up, and sure enough, the contrails from the ship’s massive engines still lingered like vile clouds in the atmosphere over New York.

Tony clenched his fist, slammed the gauntlet into the wood of the doorframe hard enough to shake dust like snow over himself.

“He asked me to stay behind to continue your—” Wong tried to say again, but Tony was having absolutely none of it. 

Tony paced away from the open door, clenching and unclenching the fist of the gauntlet, harder each time—incorporating the gestures he’d learned from Stephen, even with shaking fingers. His breath was coming too fast, but he didn’t (couldn’t) stop.

“Come on, you piece of shit,” Tony begged. Tried the motions again, turned and stalked away when Wong tried to come up alongside to help. 

“Breathe, Stark,” Wong warned.

Tony’s head snapped up, full of half-formed rage and a splash of panic, ready to verbally tear into him. But he didn’t. He breathed. 

Five seconds in… Five seconds out.

His trembling hand pressed to his chest, where he could feel the stitches under his shirt. The stupid, terrible shirt Stephen had bought him.

Five seconds in…

It all hit him, very suddenly. Toasted sandwiches, laughing over the diaries of long-dead Masters. Selfies with Peter, horrible box wine, the way Stephen looked at him when he thought he wasn’t watching. Dancing to ‘80s pop music, waking from a nightmare to find him there.

Five seconds out. 

Tony slammed the gauntlet into a tight fist, punched it into the air in front of him, and formed the gestures he had been practicing for hours. In a burst of brilliant green light, the time stone activated under his hand, and a band of that light orbited the wrist of the gauntlet.

Wong stared, dumbfounded.

“All this time, you’ve done the gestures perfectly. And now, suddenly, you can control the stone? _How_?”

Tony caught his breath, chest heaving from the effort. “We’ll tell you when you’re older, Wong.”

His shaking fingers began to manipulate the band of light, but Wong surged forward.

“Stark!”

Tony looked up. His eyes were shining with tears.

“What are you going to do?” was all Wong found to ask.

Tony’s face broke into a bright but unsure smile. “Hell if I know.”

He spun the band of light like it was a prize wheel, and he was suddenly gone—no flash of light, no sound at all. Three minutes later, the clock in the hall chimed two.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you guys are INCREDIBLE, thank you so much for the outpouring of support! My lil heart can barely take it! Of note: there will be some things I don't cover because I reaaally don't just want to rewrite the entire movie, that would be boring for me and for you. Anything that seems different from the movie can be attributed to the fact this timeline is well and truly fucked. This one was really hard to get the way I wanted it to be, so I hope it meets expectations! Again, thank you all so much, and I hope to keep the updates trucking for you! <3


	14. the worst timing

There was a certain amount of whiplash involved with going from torture to nearly being sucked through a hole in a spaceship. Literally and figuratively. Stephen felt something catch around his middle like a rope, and his body snapped forward with momentum ceased. He watched with relief as the lifeless body of Thanos’s emissary floated off with the rest of the debris.

“I got you!” he heard Peter over the din of rushing air, and Stephen realized that a thin strand of webbing was all that stood between him and the cold emptiness of space. He grabbed on hard, but it was Peter that did all the work hauling him back in.

Tony made quick work of sealing the hole in the side of the ship as soon as Stephen was through it, while Peter scrambled to help the sorcerer to his feet. The cloak hugged itself to Stephen’s shoulders, and he made a small movement to keep it from greeting Peter like an old friend.

“Mister Strange,” Peter whispered, pulling the mask off his face. His normally perky expression was awash with concern. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding.”

Stephen dabbed at his face, winced, but nodded. “Thank you, Peter. Really.” The smile fit oddly on his face (probably due to the fact that his face was currently killing him). “Try not to be too friendly, we’re not supposed to know each other, remember?”

“So, I’m not allowed to be concerned about people I don’t know?”

“I—” Stephen began a lecture, but found none forthcoming. “Of course you are. Sorry.”

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Tony said loudly as he landed beside them, gaining both of their attention. He spread his arms like a showman might. “For saving your life, that is.”

“I think that _he_ did most of the saving, actually,” Stephen said, indicating Peter with a slight nod of his head. “What’s the relationship here? Is he your ward, or—”

“ _Ward_?” Tony laughed, crossing his arms.

“Regardless,” Stephen cut in, “why the _hell_ would you let a teenager follow you up here? This isn’t some burning building he can just swing out of, this is—”

“He didn’t _let_ me do anything,” Peter said very quickly. Both Stephen and Tony turned to look at him, and the very serious face he had constructed against them crumbled almost instantly. “I mean I… I chose to do this. It’s my decision.” 

He tried again to put on a proud, indignant kind of face; stood taller, threw his shoulders back as though to appear bigger than he was. He took in a breath, his eyes on Stephen, and there was suddenly panic in them. Right, they weren’t supposed to know each other.

“I’m Peter, by the way,” he said almost too quickly, and he held out a hand.

“Doctor Strange,” Stephen supplemented, and he shook Peter’s hand with a nod of acknowledgment accompanied by a smirk.

“You’re a doctor?!” he gasped—Stephen almost slapped his hand to his own face. Peter winced, and his young face went full pink in embarrassment. He formed the word ‘sorry’ without actually vocalizing it.

They were lucky that Tony had taken the opportunity to turn toward the front of the ship to examine their surroundings better—his eyes on what may have been the steering mechanism, several control panels, and the huge viewing window that took up most of the space.

Stephen watched as Tony stared out at the fluid-like space outside the front of the ship. Arms akimbo, partially armored as though still expecting a fight. Bathed in shifting blue light, his eyes intense and focused on whatever problem was running circles through his head. Stephen was very familiar with that face; his problem-solving face, so deep in thought that sometimes it was difficult to even grab his attention.

As Stephen was lost staring, a realization suddenly struck him hard enough to knock the wind out of him. He was never going to see Tony again. Not _his_ Tony. Not the Tony he’d spent two months training, fallen stupidly in love with, and even more stupidly confessed to at the last possible second. 

Stephen was going to die, and he would never know if—somehow, impossibly—Tony felt the same way.

His hand clamped to his mouth to keep it from trembling. Dammit, there wasn’t time for this. He couldn’t waste any of the time he had left _crying_. But that didn’t stop the tears from coming. He squeezed his eyes shut, forced the tears out, got it over with. Fought one hard jag of breath that tried to turn into a sob—he tamped it down, struggled with his next breath, but managed.

Somewhere in his periphery, Stephen swore that he saw a flash of green light. He turned, his wet eyes on the myriad machinery surrounding them. 

Peter had come up beside him, peering up with the most depressing expression Stephen had ever seen on another human being. It was enough to turn his tears into a single, quiet laugh that shook his whole frame. 

“I’m all right,” he whispered even as he hastily wiped the tears from his face.

“It’s more than a crush, isn’t it?” Peter asked, for once sounding more serious than his age might suggest.

Stephen took a breath, wanted to explain. But all he could do was nod.

“Oh man,” Peter sighed, feathering a hand through his hair. “You’ve got, like… _the worst_ timing, Mister Strange.”

Stephen almost laughed again, but restrained himself somehow. 

“Funny how the end of the world sneaks up on you,” he said, ruffling Peter’s hair.

“Hey, uh, how am I doing, by the way?” Peter asked, trying to smooth out his hair where Stephen had mussed it. 

“You’re doing fine.”

“Ugh,” he grumbled, staring at the back of Tony’s head. He rubbed both of his hands on his face, so weary for someone so young. “This _sucks_. I hate keeping secrets, it makes me so nervous all the time, like I’m accidentally gonna say something wrong and blow everything.”

Stephen’s brows slammed down his forehead, a sardonic little smirk tugging at his face. “Peter. You literally have a secret identity.”

“Well, I—” Peter began, and a confused look took hold of his face, screwed up into consternation. He shrugged, suddenly and wildly. “Yep, okay, you got me there. Good one, sir.”

+++

Tony landed awkwardly on a piece of alien machinery in a flash of green light. Caught his breath as his eyes darted to take in his surroundings as quickly as possible.

He was on the ship. When? He leaned to look over the edge of wherever he’d landed, surveying the landscape. He saw Stephen immediately, a little more than twenty feet below him, and Peter standing fairly close to the sorcerer.

Something in Tony’s chest jumped when Stephen turned, and his cold eyes _almost_ found Tony’s hiding place. Because even from his position, Tony could see the tears in those eyes, the trails down his face. Saw him wipe his face quickly when Peter snuck up from behind him.

He watched Stephen and Peter, talking too quietly to hear from his perch. And he saw Stephen ruffle a hand through Peter’s hair. It brought a little grin to Tony’s face. Knowing Peter, he probably had this whole time travel thing figured out by now, if he hadn’t managed to weasel out of Stephen already. 

And, far off to the front of the ship, Tony looked right at his own back. A little shiver moved through him, but he worked past it. He got on one knee, hunkered down, tried to hear anything.

Stephen and Peter had moved to the front of the ship, where Past Tony had started to say something (Wow, did he really move his arms that much when he talked? Why didn’t anyone tell him these things?). Stephen had peeled away from Peter, and suddenly Past Tony and Stephen were practically nose-to-nose, arguing in clipped tones that Tony couldn’t hear but he definitely remembered.

He knew exactly when he was. They were arguing about the stone, and whether or not to steer the ship back home. He remembered because he’d _hated_ Stephen, then. Hated him because he’d been so cold, callously threw his and Peter’s lives under the proverbial bus for some old, green rock. He was just some tall, arrogant wizard that came out of nowhere and acted like he knew everything about the stones, about what was best for them without even _knowing_ them.

But, Tony realized with a little twist in his stomach, Stephen _had_ known them. He knew what was going to happen to Peter, to the stone, to _himself_ , and he hadn’t even batted an eye. He’d cared, and Tony was just now finding out about it.

He wanted to fly down there, grab himself by the collar and shake some sense into him. This was _Stephen_ , not some random asshole. He wanted to take his own place, tell the other Tony to sit in time-out while the grown-ups made real plans.

But there was a small part of him that sounded like Stephen when he’d said ‘ _and we create a paradox_ ’. Tony sighed hard, closed his eyes, and nodded.

“Not yet,” he murmured, and, clenching his fist, he disappeared in a flash of green light.

+++

The aliens were a surprise. Not that Stephen hadn’t expected some kind of life on an alien planet. These were not exactly the sort of intelligent life that he’d expected, however. They were, in a word, _strange_.

Tony was deep in conversation with who appeared to be the leader of the group—they called themselves the Guardians of the Galaxy, but they seemed more like a rag-tag bunch of bounty hunters than outright heroes. Quill, who had tried to get them to call him Star-Lord (at which Tony had _just_ stopped laughing), seemed well-meaning, if not particularly clever, and was meshing with Tony about as well as oil might with water.

Stephen smirked, his arms crossed and just watching Tony argue for a long moment. Even on a ruined, devastated planet, surrounded by strange beings and fighting for the best way to keep the universe from ending, Stephen tried to find the moments to memorize everything that he could about Tony Stark. 

The way he moved his hands when he talked, how quick and animated his movements were. The shape of his shoulders, more evident in this armor than in any before it. The color of his eyes, just how long his eyelashes were. How he had placed himself between Peter and the Guardians, even if just slightly. His voice on certain words, but mostly his laugh. 

If he was going to die today, he wanted to remember that laugh.

The arguing didn’t seem to be dying down, and surely if Stephen kept staring at Tony, _someone_ was going to notice. So, rather than waiting for a plan to coalesce between two warring parties, Stephen decided that it was time. 

He knew that, at some point, he would be able to see into what Tony had called _millions_ of possible timelines. He was going to use the time that they had left before Thanos inevitably arrived to claim the time stone to search those timelines for the plan that would get the gauntlet on Tony’s hand, to the Sanctum two months ago—the plan that would get him killed.

Stephen found an outcropping of rock nearby, still in view of Tony and Peter, and crossed his legs under him. Took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and opened the aperture of the Eye. 

The Ancient One had spoken to him—both of them frozen in a second, lightning in the snow as she slowly died—about glimpsing into future timelines. How she had never been able to see past the moment of her own death. Stephen took a steadying breath, and hoped that he could manage to stay alive long enough to help save the universe.


	15. 14,000,605

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! Another quick THANK YOU from me for being so awesome, and another warning before a chapter. This one includes multiple deaths of multiple characters, and while none are described in too much detail, some are pretty violent. I don't think it's enough violence for an official archive warning, but if y'all think it is then please let me know and I will change the warnings for this fic.

Quill was the first to die. Thanos grabbed Quill’s entire head in his massive fist and squeezed the life out of him. The Guardians did not take it well. Tony tried his best to keep the big one from running in (screaming with rage and sorrow), but it was no use. He and the woman with the antennae and huge eyes were crushed under the boulders Thanos summoned from thin air.

The first time he saw Peter die, Stephen almost broke his concentration and struggled to keep control of the spell. He had to watch as Thanos broke every bone in Peter’s chest with a single punch from the power stone. He died instantly, his heart crushed and torn to pieces by his sternum and ribs collapsing inward. Peter’s lifeless, skinny body tumbled to the dust and didn’t move again.

And Tony screamed. It made Stephen’s breath freeze in his throat, every part of him feeling the terror in Tony’s anguished voice. He called out Peter’s name, his throat raw.

In the next moment, Tony was in Thanos’ space, throwing a flurry of punches, repulsor blasts, anything he could do to bring the Titan any of the pain he was feeling. Thanos just swatted Tony like an insect. Tony shoved himself up, went right back at him.

No matter how many times Thanos struck him down, Tony got back up. Slower and harder with each fall, but even bleeding and bruised, his arms shaking and his knees barely holding him, he still got back on his feet to fight.

Until he didn’t. Until Tony was too broken to move anymore, and his eyes glassed over. His breathing slowed, looking right at Stephen. And he died.

Stephen couldn’t move, couldn’t look away from Tony’s body, couldn’t stop the pain and nausea from filling his stomach. His own tears surged out of him with a horrible cry, hands in shaking fists—couldn’t tear his eyes away, no matter how hard he tried.

Thanos looked down at him, and he shook his head. “Disappointing,” was all he said as he brought his boot down and crushed Stephen’s skull.

But the vision didn’t end with his death, as the Ancient One had said. And so Stephen pressed on, watching future events unfold. 

Interesting. 

Had the Ancient One not been able to view any future after her death because her abilities were somehow lesser than his own? He highly doubted that. Would he somehow _not_ die here on Titan? A little spark of hope lit in his chest, and it turned very quickly into a blazing fire.

Stephen followed this first timeline to a half-dead universe in chaos. Thanos alive, the gauntlet on his hand, and any remaining Avengers dead at his feet. Not optimal.

So he backtracked, and he tried again.

And he tried again after that.

Stephen learned the names of the Guardians as he watched them die over and over, screaming for one another in anguish. They loved each other, as odd and mismatched as they all seemed. Drax, bullheaded but strangely kind. Mantis, frail, out of her league, but determined. Latecomer Nebula, full of anger and sadness. Quill, who Stephen saw fly into a rage again and again because of what Thanos had done to Gamora (a woman that Stephen would never meet, but he heard her name from their mouths enough that he felt their pain at her loss every time they spoke it).

In timeline after timeline, Stephen watched them die—millions of ways, from indescribable violence, to dust. In some ways, the latter was worse. No heroics, just a simple fade from existence. The silence was always deafening, horrible, as he watched his friends disappear around him.

In some timelines, Stephen used the Eye against Thanos—never enough to defeat him, one stone against four. Sometimes he hid the stone, but Thanos always managed a way to acquire it. In every possible timeline, Thanos collected every Infinity Stone, and in every timeline he wiped out half the life in the universe with a snap of his fingers. In some, the battle against the Titan continued past the snap, but they always concluded in Thanos victorious over the broken bodies of Earth’s last defenders.

Hundreds of possibilities blurred by, deaths bleeding into one another, almost becoming rote. Peter’s eyes going cold, Tony’s last breaths, the familiar feeling of dying on a repeating loop. Dust crumbling between his fingers where Tony had just been; Mantis crying, her entire body heaving with unrepentant sobs; Nebula breaking into thousands of pieces in her father’s hand, parts scattering at his feet as she screamed.

Some internal part of him kept track of just how many possible outcomes had played out in front of him, and he realized that Tony had definitely downplayed just _how many_ millions he was going to see. Past five million, Stephen was beginning to wonder just how unlikely the probability of Tony getting that gauntlet was.

Tony died in his arms, coughing up blood and apologizing. 

Stephen died in Tony’s arms, confessions spilling out of him faster than blood.

Peter died crying, screaming, turning slowly into ash.

Stephen watched them fail in millions of ways. He watched Thanos win again and again. The odds were so vehemently stacked against them. But there had to be a way, even _one, single way_ that this ended in their victory.

It was timeline 14,000,605. After so much death, so much loss, Stephen finally found the one where he saw Tony slip the gauntlet on his own hand. He saw the look of awe on Tony’s face, bathed in the light of the stones. For just one moment, enraptured by the power, the possibilities. And then a bitter, angry scowl seized his mouth. Tears—from the pain, from the loss, from everything that had brought him to this point—spilled out of him with an angry sob.

Tony clenched his fist, just as he’d seen Thanos do. The stones flared like broken Christmas lights, stuttering and flashing at random.

“Oh, shit,” Tony murmured, the stones’ light reflecting his his wide, wet eyes.

And just like that, he was in the Sanctum Sanctorum, Stephen and Wong skidding to a halt just in front of him with their shields out. 

This would have been enough. All Stephen needed to know was how to get Tony there, what path to follow to that point. It didn’t matter how Stephen had died in that loop, just that Tony had the gauntlet. He should have been done.

But… 

But he didn’t stop. He stayed, and he watched it all unfold in front of him from Tony’s point of view. Ten minutes at a time, Stephen watched himself fall in love with Tony Stark.

He saw how his annoyance had turned to frustration, then to understanding, finally to admiration. He saw his own hands shaking as he slowly taught Tony the configurations for his spells. Saw the little appreciative smirk on his own face when Tony made a snide quip.

He watched Tony remain in the same space, but at the beginning of each new loop, Stephen had effectively teleported across the room, or into a chair, or directly in front of him. Once with a ham sandwich, and another with a book open in Tony’s face. 

Watched himself go completely red when Tony took his face in his hand, searched him for injury, and wished that he could hide his face again. Stephen saw exactly how many times Tony had seen him stealing quiet glances across the room, and just how long those glances had held.

He was utterly and completely obvious. It was almost funny to watch it from the other side—but still not funny enough to forget the horrible way it had turned in his stomach.

Finally, he saw their last minutes together—agonizingly slow, saw the tears gathering in his own eyes, his last second confession that caught them both off-guard. A bare second of silence hung between them, hopeless and terrifying. Tony opened his mouth, and…

And he popped back in the next day, alone. Stephen watched Tony search for him, panicking, badgering Wong (poor, long-suffering Wong) for information. Saw Tony’s desperate breath, scrambling to make the gauntlet work.

His shaking hand pressing to his chest, lingering there, and a sudden, knowing look came into Tony’s eyes. 

As if it was suddenly so clear, Tony activated the stone with a few simple gestures. As though whatever thought he’d just had brought everything together so completely that it was unexpectedly easy.

And Stephen paused just at that moment, with the time stone glowing and Tony spinning that band of light. 

He could have kept watching. Could have followed this timeline to wherever it was going to end. He could see if Tony would save them, somehow. If they would see each other again. If, impossibly, Tony could ever love him, too. He could have very easily done so. And he very nearly did.

But maybe knowing everything wasn’t all it cracked up to be. Maybe having a few surprises left would be nice change of pace. 

Stephen slammed violently back into the regular flow of time, and the millions of strands of possibilities pulled taut around him and snapped all at once. All but one. He kept a very firm grasp on that one. 

Tony had, at some point, come to the ground in front of him, kneeling close with one hand on Stephen’s shoulder—steadying him, anchoring him. Peter and the Guardians had gathered behind him, peering with a mixture of curiosity and concern.

“Hey,” Tony said, surprisingly soft, bringing Stephen’s focus back to him. “You’re back, you’re all right.”

Stephen fought very hard to swallow his feelings, staring at that face. “I’m all right,” he managed to say, very quiet.

+++

More or less, he had been filled in on the plan. A plan he knew wasn’t going to work, but that was all part of _his_ plan, anyway. Quill was going to lose his cool, just like he always did (And how could Stephen blame him? There had been more than a few hundred timelines where _he_ had flown into a rage over what Thanos did to Tony), and one by one they would fall to Thanos.

He was going to give up the time stone so that Tony could live. It was almost ironic. He’d choose save that man’s life anyway—Earth’s greatest defender, the only mortal man who could make Thanos bleed, genius philanthropist, more selfless than he would ever let anyone know. 

But Stephen knew, because he’d seen it millions of times. How many times Tony had died for Peter; for the Guardians, who he barely even knew; for _Stephen_ , who he hated. Tony Stark was a hero millions of times over. 

Now the universe depended on Stephen bargaining for Tony’s life in exchange for the stone. And Stephen was going to die for that sacrifice. Maybe, in the future that came after Stephen’s visions, Tony would find a way to save them—and the rest of the universe. Maybe he couldn’t, and would have to settle for killing Thanos.

That was a risk Stephen was more than willing to take.

Somewhere just out of his line of sight, there was a flash of the same green light that he’d seen on the ship. His breath caught in his throat, and he looked upward—at all the jutting rock, the ruined architecture, the junked spaceship they’d crawled out of.

“Tony,” he said just under his breath, the smallest smile on his lips.


	16. end game

Stephen hit the ground hard, the red dust of Titan splashing up around him from the impact. He tried not to cry out, but he was fairly sure he’d bruised a rib in the fall. He attempted to force himself up onto his knees, but Thanos was already in pursuit, shaking the ground with each of his bounding footsteps. Charging closer and closer, fist outstretched and reaching for the sorcerer.

And just as Thanos was about to grab Stephen’s prone form—wounded, shaking hands too slow to form any defense—there was a sound of repulsor blasts and a whipping wind as Tony landed in front of him. Tony with half his armor missing, and wearing a thrift store kitten shirt.

An enormous blue shield exploded out of his hands, sparking as it blocked the Titan’s full-body attack—ringing in Stephen’s head like a bell had been struck directly between his ears.

And suddenly, it all stopped. Everything froze in place—everything from Tony’s shield (still thrumming like trapped electricity, but still) to Thanos himself, his expression akin to what Stephen might place as _baffled_. Everything had paused, everything but Tony and Stephen, who still lay half-crumpled on the ground.

Tony turned, and he faced Stephen with a huge, almost playful grin. Raising his eyebrows as if to say ‘you’re welcome’.

“Neat, huh?” Tony asked. “Just a little trick I learned from a wizard.”

He held his hand out, and Stephen reached up and grasped it. Tony pulled him up—right up into his space, held Stephen’s shoulder with his gauntleted hand to steady him. Very close.

“Shouldn’t you be somewhere in the future, saving the universe?” Stephen asked, his eyes just searching Tony’s face.

“Yeah, probably,” Tony said. “Had to stop by for something first.”

And without wasting another second, he grabbed Stephen by the back of the head with his free hand, and pulled them together at the mouths.

Or, at least, he tried to. 

Stephen clapped his hand hard over Tony’s mouth on its approach. Tony blinked at him, confused, their noses touching.

For just one second, Stephen felt like he’d been frozen, too. Everything curled up inside of him, terrified, wanted to scramble away for whatever reason. How could this possibly be happening? _Why_? Tony Stark had learned to control the time stone and come forward in time, and he was using that information to try to _kiss him_.

Stephen pulled back, only an inch.

“What the hell are you doing?” he asked, eyes frantically searching Tony’s in this new (welcome) closeness. He only lifted his hand away when Tony made no indication of further pursuit.

“Thought that was kinda obvious,” Tony told him, voice low like he was telling a secret. “How can I be more obvious next time?”

“No—” Stephen uttered, just a note of frustration under the other, more important emotions. “Tony—the gauntlet—”

“I’m not gonna cause a paradox, I promise,” Tony cut him off with a smirk. “I just wanted one second.”

He leaned in again, but Stephen still held him firmly back. A knowing but impatient look settled on Tony’s face, but he obliged.

“Tony, you’ve known me for… for _hours_. You’re about to get _married_ , you can’t—”

“I know,” Tony said suddenly, firmly. The playfulness in his attitude had dropped away, and what he was left with was a mixture of guilt, bitterness, but an underlying trust and vulnerability. “I’m a grown-up, Stephen, and I can live with my own stupid decisions, okay? And trust me, I’ve made a more than a few of those along the way. I also know,” he added, for once taking his time to pick the right words, “when it’d be stupid to ignore something good for me when it practically hits me in the face.”

“All you need is a few hours to rethink everything?” Stephen asked—angry, confused, blushing, blood still pumping in his ears from his fight with Thanos.

“I’m also impulsive,” Tony murmured. “Bad habit.”

“You’re infuriating,” Stephen sighed, trying and failing to hide a growing smile.

“And you were _so_ nice an hour ago,” Tony grumbled.

“An hour for _you_.”

“Okay, we’ve definitely had this conversation before. _God_ , can you shut up for _one_ second?”

Stephen’s face broke into a full smile. “Can _you_?”

“See, this is what I’m talking about—”

Before Tony could go on some terrible rant, Stephen stilled Tony’s mouth by firmly pressing his hand over Tony’s lips again. There were tears in Stephen’s eyes, just looking at him this close—and all the fight went out of Tony in an instant. 

He bundled Stephen into his arms, held him there in a tight hug.

And they just held each other, frozen in a stolen moment on an alien planet, the battle for their lives paused around them for this embrace.

“I should go—” Tony said very quickly, breaking away.

“Yeah,” Stephen said, clearing his throat. “Um.”

Tony gave a short, dry laugh. “ _Now_ you’ve got nothing to say.” He held up the gauntlet, the time stone glowing brilliant green, and slowly turned the band of light on his wrist just a few ticks backwards. 

As time slipped backward, Tony’s shield disappeared, revealing Thanos, who Tony made back away step after step.

“There. Just how we left our heroes,” Tony mused. “No paradoxes, as promised.”

“Tony,” Stephen said just under his breath. Once he had his attention, Stephen hesitated only a moment before he laid his trembling hand on Tony’s chest—he could feel the stitches there, Stephen’s own work scrawled across him. Tony’s shining eyes blinked once, turned serious. “I know you can do this.”

Tony took a breath through his nose, and very carefully rested his hand on top of Stephen’s.

“Oh boy,” he said. If Stephen hadn’t been so close, he probably wouldn’t have heard Tony’s voice shaking. 

Stephen took the necessary steps backward, summoned a huge shield to match the one Tony had saved him with, and nodded once.

“Just go,” Stephen told him. “We’ll talk about all this _after_ you save the universe.”

Tony smirked, unsure and just a little bit giddy. “It’s a date.”

And with that, Tony was gone, and time came rushing back in around him. Thanos finished his charge to slam his fist against Stephen’s shield. It sparked and Stephen grit his teeth, but it held.

The battle was back on.

+++

Stephen forced his eyes open, having been thrown into the rocks of Titan yet again. The landscape blurred before him, and he blinked to try to right his vision (probably some kind of concussion, but not enough to completely knock him unconscious, there’d been no memory loss).

He was just in time to watch Thanos drive the blade deep between Tony’s ribs—to hear the horrible, muted choking noise in Tony’s throat from the blow—to see the shock in Tony’s eyes, the pain, the disappointment.

No matter how many millions of times Stephen had seen Tony die, it didn’t make this any easier on him. 

“Stop,” he said. His own voice felt too quiet, but with the dead planet so empty, every sound seemed to carry.

Thanos looked up at him, almost expectantly.

Stephen pushed himself up into a sitting position, leaning to ease the pain in his ribs. “Spare his life, and I’ll give you the stone,” he said.

Thanos narrowed his eyes, flicking them once to Tony (bleeding but not yet dying, not if Stephen could help it), then back to Stephen. “No tricks, wizard?”

Stephen nearly laughed. “No tricks.”

And he reached up, plucked the time stone from where he’d hidden it in the heavens, and handed one of the Infinity Stones over to the strongest being in the universe. Five stones set in the gauntlet, and only one to go—the mind stone, on Earth and imbedded in the forehead of Vision. And Stephen knew that the Avengers weren’t going to last very long against Thanos. Not with five stones.

There was something almost like respect in the Titan’s eyes before he left the planet. True to his word, he hadn’t raised another hand against any of them. His battle for the stone was over, he had no use for them anymore. Not even to kill them. 

Complete and absolute silence descended on them. Stephen could _feel_ the hatred and despair in Tony’s gaze, so much that Stephen couldn’t raise his eyes to meet it. 

“Why did you do that?” 

Just one sentence, with malice and regret, self-loathing and concern, terror and uncertainty—and underneath all of that, a hidden _thank you_.

Stephen held a hand to his middle, sure that there was some internal bleeding. Not enough to kill him (not yet). Surprising how seeing your future didn’t keep it from kicking your ass.

“We’re in the end game, now,” Stephen breathed, completely avoiding the question. 

“The one possible ending where we make this out on top,” Tony went on desperately through the pain, forcing Stephen’s hand, “involves us giving our nukes to the enemy _for free_? Are you _bullshitting_ me, Strange?”

“It wasn’t for free,” Stephen sighed (looking up at Tony like he wanted to confess everything, spill out all his feelings like that would fix anything; but he didn’t).

The Guardians had gathered around the two of them, looking lost and wounded, leaning on one another to keep themselves standing. Hovering somewhere behind Tony was Peter, his mask off and trying to reach out—to make them stop fighting, to say something.

“You’re welcome, by the way,” Stephen echoed Tony’s words from the ship.

“Don’t you _dare_ ,” Tony snapped. “You did this for a reason, not just some… some _payback_ for earlier. What’d you see, Strange? Why did you _do that_?!” The last came out of him in a shout, one that must have hurt from the way Tony held his ribs.

_Because I love you._

Some errant emotion must have shown on Stephen’s face, then. Something vulnerable, caring, something that surprised Tony Stark into blank-faced silence. So close to the end, Stephen didn’t even bother to try and erase whatever he was projecting. And for a long moment, there was silence.

“Something is happening,” Mantis said, raising her head with a look of dread on her wide-eyed face. 

She took a breath, and with a light breeze, she dispersed like ash.

Like a sickness, it took all of them. The Guardians, one by one, quietly turned to dust. Their sad, desperate faces disappearing, trying to get one last look at one another before they were gone. All but Nebula, her jaw clenched in unending rage, silent shock.

Stephen knew that he was next. He’d seen it happen. There was already numbness in his fingers, and he didn’t have to look down to know that they were already being swept away by the breeze.

“Tony,” he breathed, and the man’s head swiveled to look at him—all that anger was gone, and he was left with something else. Something both empty and overflowing. Helpless. “It was the only way.”

He didn’t feel himself break into a million pieces, or even any pain at all. He felt lightheaded. More scared than anyone who had seen their own death millions of times should have the right to be. He tried to take a breath, and found he didn’t have lungs to breathe it.

“Tony,” he tried to say one more time, but there was no voice to say it. Only his mouth moved, formed that last desperate word. He tried to fix that image of Tony into his mind, but he had no eyes to see it.

At least he didn’t have to watch Peter die this time.

And then he was gone.


	17. soul

“Tony?” Stephen found his voice again, and it echoed unnaturally around him. Like no sound he had ever heard. By the time it had reverberated back to him, it didn’t even sound like his voice anymore.

His vision came back in, and he found himself rubbing at his eyes. It wasn’t Titan sprawled out before him. Or the Sanctum, or anywhere else he recognized. The color of the sky was deeply orange, like a sunset without the sun. He stood on gently rippling water—not _in_ the water, he noticed with a quirk of an eyebrow. He shifted his weight, and the water rippled with his movement, but he didn’t break through the surface.

He glanced back up, looking for any landmarks whatsoever, anything to help center himself. But there was only the flat plain of water, the sunset sky, and Stephen.

Then, a noise, though low, found his ears. Voices, very faint, as though behind a pane of thick glass. Whispers from thousands of voices. Though quiet and distant, like a faroff breeze, he swore that he recognized a handful of them. Just a feeling, persistent in his gut.

Stephen swallowed a nervous breath, closed his eyes, and forced calm into his nerves. He wasn’t dead, he was almost completely sure of that. That meant that everyone else on Titan that had gone the same way that he had wasn’t dead either. Peter, the Guardians, anyone on Earth that had been affected by Thanos’ balancing act. Somehow alive, and… wherever he was.

When Stephen opened his eyes, Tony was standing in front of him. 

“Tony,” Stephen said.

At the same time Tony all but shouted: “Stephen!”

They met in a hard embrace, Tony nearly knocking Stephen off his feet when they crashed together. So, he was tangible. Enough to feel Tony’s frantic heartbeat against his own chest, his arms wrapped around Stephen’s back (gripping hard at the cloth of his robe, digging in and desperate). 

“Where are we?” Stephen asked, not letting go, his breath stirring Tony’s hair.

“I, uh…” Tony muttered into Stephen’s chest almost embarrassedly. “Don’t panic, but… I think you’re in the gauntlet.”

Stephen raised his eyes, just enough to get a better look at his surroundings. And then he nodded.

“Soul stone. Should’ve seen that coming.”

Tony pulled away just enough to fix Stephen with an incredulous glare. Stephen didn’t match him—he was just happy to see him.

“But it’s not just me trapped in here,” Stephen murmured in thought. 

Tony shook his head, scrubbed a hand through his hair. “I can… _feel_ them. Now that I’ve got this hunk of junk semi-operable—” He indicated the hand with the gauntlet, and true enough, the soul stone was alight. “—it feels _heavier_. And I can hear—”

“Voices,” Stephen finished, his words heavy. “They’re all in here. Everyone.”

“Jesus,” Tony whispered. “Pete—” His head whipped around, a frantic little move that brought back horrible flashes of memory (Tony sucking breath from between his fingers, clawing at his hair, _he died because of me_ ).

“If I’m fine, then so is he,” Stephen said quickly. “Tony.”

Stephen took Tony’s face in both of his hands, gently turned Tony back to face him. Tony’s breath was coming in short and quick, but he just let Stephen move him. Big, wet, brown eyes staring up at him, the edges of panic starting to take hold there. He’d seen so much, Stephen thought as he wiped the tears away with his thumb. 

“Breathe,” Stephen said quietly.

And Tony did, five seconds in and five seconds out, never breaking their eye contact.

“I need your help,” Tony said after he’d gathered himself. A tiny, helpless laugh bubbled out of him. “Again.”

“Tell me what happened,” Stephen urged him, didn’t drop his hands.

“Where the hell do I start?” Tony sighed, sagged.

“Titan. As soon as I left you.”

“God, that far back, huh?”

Stephen grinned. “And you can leave out everything after showing up at the Sanctum two months ago.”

Tony swallowed more of his nerves, half a smirk daring to flit onto his face. “But that’s the best part.”

Despite everything, Stephen felt his ears go hot—and Tony’s quiet laughter at his reaction only made it spread.

“Right,” Tony said quickly to get them back on track. “Nebula’s ship. We used the parts from the donut ship to fix hers up, and we got our asses back to Earth.”

Tony moved away, pacing as he talked. The water rippled around his feet, the echoes of his footsteps bouncing off of Stephen as he stood and he listened.

Tony and Banner had worked with one of the stones before, and the matter of locating the particular signature that the mind stone put out was one that the two geniuses didn’t have a particularly hard time constructing. Tony didn’t bother with the details, and Stephen was glad for that; he didn’t know exactly how Tony was projecting himself into whatever space the soul stone had made for him, but he guessed that it took some effort on Tony’s part. The shorter the story, the better.

And as Tony told the story, as he became more comfortable, Stephen realized that they were no longer in an empty plain. The color of the sky hadn’t changed, and neither did the water at their feet. But some shadowy shapes had come into existence around them. Something familiar, something that Tony must have associated with Stephen. Semi-solid shapes that looked like the glass cases, desk, and chairs of the artifact room of the Sanctum. Stephen had no idea why it was happening, but it definitely was.

Whatever had been left of the Avengers on Earth, Tony had managed to gather them and use his and Banner’s algorithm to search for the mind stone’s particular signature—therefore the gauntlet, therefore Thanos. 

“He’s alive?” Stephen asked, incredulous.

“Think so,” Tony murmured. “Didn’t stick around long enough to find out. As soon as I got this thing on my hand, it started going crazy. The last thing I could think of was you and the time stone, how easy you got it to work for you, and then… Well, _voila_ , I guess.”

He was shaking. Stephen stood from where he’d been leaning on the shadowy facsimile of his desk to Tony’s side. Tony tried to hide it, of course.

“You’ve made it this far,” Stephen said carefully, observing Tony with a close eye for any indication of another panic attack. “Why do you need my help?”

“Because I’m scared, dammit,” Tony breathed between his teeth. And he looked _winded_ , as if just admitting his fear had taken physical effort. “Scared I can’t save anyone, that I can’t bring anyone back. That I’m gonna be alone.”

And he finally let Stephen see the root of his fear. His nervous eyes hovered somewhere at Stephen’s collar, afraid to even look up. Tony Stark, vulnerable and exposed, everything laid out for Stephen to see. The front that he’d put up from the very first time Stephen had met him had come crashing down. And he wasn’t Iron Man, wasn’t full of bravado and snark. Just Tony.

“You’re not alone,” Stephen told him, placed a hand on either of Tony’s shoulders. “You’re never going to be.”

Stephen leaned in, and he pressed a careful, shaking kiss on Tony’s brow. He pulled away just enough to see Tony’s big eyes blinking up at him, red-faced and barely breathing. 

“Remember what I told you,” Stephen said. “Don’t force it. Just like with the power stone and the time stone, you need to find something to drive you to link with the soul stone. Some kind of powerful emotion you can tap into to release all the souls Thanos trapped here.”

A worried laugh rocked out of Tony’s frame. “Why’d you decide to trust _me_ to save the universe?”

Stephen smiled. “Because I know you, Tony.”

“Yeah, well, you kinda cheated.”

“I think _you_ cheated first.”

Tony sighed, deflating with a silly little smile as he gazed upward at Stephen. “Okay, that’s fair.”

A soft laugh rose out of Stephen, barely loud enough for even himself to hear, just beaming down at Tony—affection practically pouring out of his eyes.

“Thanks, by the way,” Tony said, though something in his throat made him pause to clear it. “For not letting me… For stopping me from…” He took his time with the next handful of words, his sad eyes searching Stephen’s. “I’m impulsive, but maybe it makes me less of an asshole that I didn’t kiss you.”

Stephen opened his mouth, didn’t say exactly how much he’d wanted Tony to kiss him (and still did), and closed it again. 

“You’re welcome?” Stephen questioned, an odd turn upward at the end of his sentence, not even sure if that was what Tony was looking for.

After the briefest pause, Tony stumbled over a giggle, tried to keep it in, and utterly failed. He burst into a line of brilliant laughter, holding a hand to his chest as if to keep his stitches from tearing. He doubled over, catching his breath between bouts of laughter.

Then Tony was gone.

And then so was Stephen.

+++

Coming back into existence wasn’t quite like anything Stephen had ever experienced. It was a bit like being erased from it in the first place, but more sudden and more violent. Like a drum being suddenly struck, a loud noise and endless thrumming reverborations singing through his body. A body that existed in the real world again, Stephen realized as his feet touched actual, solid ground hard enough for his knees to buckle.

He heard a voice beside him, strangled and scared, and knew it was Peter without having to look up. A good thing, because Stephen couldn’t exactly see. The bright orange light emanating from a point maybe five feet in front of him was effectively blinding, and he slammed his eyes shut against it.

More voices came in around him, the sound of more feet hitting the ground, more shuffling and confusion in the light.

And then a scream. A long, suffering scream that tore into Stephen’s heart, ripped him to shreds on the inside, stole all of his breath.

The light ceased all at once, snapped back into the soul stone. They were in the Sanctum. Somehow, of anywhere in the universe, they were safe in New York, in Stephen’s home. Once the light had gone, Stephen saw that it _was_ Peter right beside him, coughing and squinting as though in pain. And beside _him_ were Quill and his crew, all in a tangle as if they’d fallen over one another. There were others, too—Banner, Nebula; the king of Wakanda and the king of Asgard; the Avengers, in person, in his Sanctum, and not splashed on the front of a gossip magazine; Captain America himself. Wong, having just appeared in the doorway, dropped his plate and his sandwich in shock.

And there, standing like a statue frozen in a moment of anguish in the center of it all, was Tony. The gauntlet was in ruin, smoking and dented as though it had just gone through immense heating and pressure. And Tony looked as though he’d just been blown up. The arm with the gauntlet scorched and red, his sleeve burnt to the collar, part of his face singed and shining from the burn. He gasped a hard breath, as though surfacing after a long dive. 

And familiar laughter weakly spilled out of him, just as he had left Stephen inside the soul stone.

Tony pitched backward, limp, and hit the ground with a very final thud.

For just one second, it felt as if the entire planet had stopped moving.

“Tony!” Stephen cried, down on his knees beside him in an instant. The gauntlet popped and tinged like an overheated engine, and Stephen avoided it completely—placed his fingers at the pulse in Tony’s neck and felt a surge of relief and adrenaline flush through him. “He’s alive, but—”

Barely. His pulse irregular, threadbare. Panic stuck its barbs into Stephen’s heart, and for one horrifying moment, he didn’t know what to do. He just watched Tony’s feeble attempts at breath with a growing, consuming fear that stuck like ice in his veins. Felt the looming shadows of the Avengers closing in around him, peering and talking in words that sounded like gibberish to Stephen’s frightened brain.

Then something else took over. Something that was stronger than any fear he’d ever felt.

“Peter,” Stephen warned, a vague hand motion all the indication he gave that he was about to do something stupid.

“Oh jeez,” Peter said thinly, and he turned to the others, trying to get them to move back. “Everyone back! He’s a doctor!”

Stephen locked his fingers into a peculiar configuration, and slammed his hands together. A loud clap like thunder echoed around them. Flickers of electricity danced on Stephen’s fingertips, and he tamed them into the palms of his hands. Took a sharp breath, and held them to Tony’s chest.

The defib shock that blasted through him brought Tony gasping back into the world with painful tears in his eyes and his chest heaving.

Dismissing patient care protocol completely, Stephen grabbed Tony up into his arms and squeezed him to his chest. Held him there, forcing his own breath to regulate. 

They were both alive, both here in the real world, and finally at the right time. 

“I knew you could do it,” Stephen murmured—just loud enough for Tony alone to hear.

“This kinda hurts, Doc,” Tony faintly wheezed against him.

“Sorry,” Stephen said, fighting the emotions log-jammed in his throat as he released Tony from his relentless grip, the tears shining on his face. “Sorry—”

They were swamped suddenly from all sides, the Avengers and Guardians all talking at once in an incoherent mess. A jumble of limbs helped Tony to his feet, just as Quill and Wong helped Stephen up—Quill already clamoring for answers and action. Tony had locked Peter in an inescapable hug, mussing the boy’s hair as Banner clapped him on the back. Rogers trying to get some semblance of order, and, failing that, joining in the brief celebration. 

There would be a time for explanation, for introductions, for plans, for Thanos, for finishing this once and for all. The universe let them have this moment.

Across all the chaos, Stephen and Tony locked eyes and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so nervous. This is a lot of characters, suddenly. I know there are some folks reading who are desperately interested in how Tony got the gauntlet in the first place. But this has always been first and foremost a love story that happens to have a plot. I hope vague is acceptable enough in this case. There are a few more chapters in me, I'll let you know when we're just about finished. I hope it's okay, I'm so so nervous about this one and where it's taking me.


	18. assemble

Stephen hadn’t quite convinced everyone that he needed to look after Tony’s injuries as much as he’d stolen Tony right out from under them. Tony could move on his own, but that didn’t keep Stephen from lending an arm for him to lean on as he led Tony up the stairs and to the familiar setting of the artifact room.

He wheeled in the old operating table, and Tony gladly took the assistance offered to hop up onto it. The noise of conversation echoed up the stairs, but it was an incoherent jumble from this distance. It didn’t matter, anyway, Stephen thought as he examined his patient. _Tony_ mattered.

“How do you feel?” Stephen asked, and his hand hovered over the burnt sleeve of Tony’s shirt.

“Peachy,” Tony hissed. “Just got the universe’s best tan, is all.”

Stephen smirked, and his eyes flicked up minutely to meet Tony’s. His lips parted to say something, but nothing immediately came. Tony saw, and his shifted his weight as well as he could before he summoned his words.

“How do _you_ feel?” Tony asked, meeting that close gaze. “I mean, after being stuffed into the soul stone with trillions of other people, I think I’d—”

“Tony,” Stephen cut him off. “You just _saved_ trillions of people. By yourself. And it almost killed you.” Tony tried to wave it off, but Stephen continued. “It _could have_ killed you. So, how I feel doesn’t really matter right now.”

“Hey,” Tony said quickly. “It matters to me.” Instead of letting the moment hang there between them, Tony nodded and looked away. “Yeah, it hurts. Like a really shitty sunburn, and my heart’s going too fast, still. And we’ve got all the Avengers running around downstairs with a handful of aliens I brought with me, and dealing with all that is making my head hurt, so…” He slowed the waterfall of words, shrugged, and regretted the sudden movement.

Stephen took a step backward, eyes sweeping Tony’s injuries, and finally nodded. “Take your shirt off, Tony.”

He was surprised when no immediate snarky comment followed. In fact, Tony’s mouth pressed into a tight line, and Stephen saw his throat bob.

“Sure,” Tony eventually said. “I, ah… think I might need some help.”

“Oh,” Stephen said shortly. “Right.”

So Stephen moved back into Tony’s space, Tony’s knees on either side of his hips. He paused for just a moment, fingers shaking as he held them just at the hem of Tony’s shirt (kittens mocking him). Saw Tony’s breath hitch, and Stephen’s fingers skittered back—afraid he’d hurt him. 

Their eyes met, and Stephen’s ears suddenly bloomed full red. That wasn’t pain in Tony’s eyes. 

He took a breath, and his hands came back to the hem of Tony’s shirt. Gingerly, he lifted it up and away off of his patient (Tony hissed when he had to move his arms to allow it’s removal, and it snagged just once on the gauntlet).

Stephen tried to focus. On the stitches that seemed to be healing up nicely. The burn damage from the gauntlet on Tony’s arm, on one side of his face. He tried very hard not to let his eyes wander to the line of Tony’s collarbone, his throat, down the sternum to his stomach and—

His eyes snapped back up to Tony’s face, and there was a cheeky grin waiting for him there.

“Not really professional, Doc,” Tony warned him, but even his snark was glazed over with emotion.

Stephen tried to speak again, cleared his throat. “I _did_ ask where it hurt.”

A laugh snuck out of Tony’s chest, but even that dried up when Stephen slid a hand (as steady as he could) onto Tony’s thigh. _That_ shut him right up.

“Hold still,” Stephen told him. And with his free hand, he formed a spell that brought a disk of golden light to his palm, like he’d captured a sunbeam. Tony watched in absolute silence, light reflecting in his eyes. “This sort of spell isn’t very effective at stitching cuts, but it should help with the burns.”

Tony blinked up at him, and he relaxed almost instantly. “Huh,” he murmured. “That’s pretty cool.”

Stephen fought off the proud flush he felt rising in his face.

“I, uh,” Tony began as Stephen ran the healing spell slowly across this arm, his face. “I don’t think I can say I did this all by myself, y’know.”

“Like you really needed my help,” Stephen laughed, not quite meeting him in the eye.

“Well,” Tony shrugged, and he laced his fingers with Stephen’s as they rested on his thigh. “You make me laugh.”

Stephen’s brows screwed down into incredulity, and he fixed his eyes on Tony’s. “Are you flirting with me?” he asked, a full smile finally blooming on his face. 

“Depends on if it’s working,” Tony murmured, dropping his eyes away under that scrutiny.

“Get a room, the two of you,” Wong laughed suddenly from the doorway, his arms crossed with a knowing smirk.

Stephen tensed and turned, their hands breaking away from each other, and Tony shifted just slightly to get Wong in his line of sight—the red in his face clashing with the annoyance he’d set in his glare.

“We _had_ a room,” Tony muttered. “ _You_ walked into the room.”

“Your room doesn’t have a door,” Wong amended. “Rogers is on his way. Make yourselves decent, won’t you?”

And, after only another moment, Steve Rogers appeared in the doorway beside Wong. Still looking battle-worn and weary, his blue eyes fixed on Tony. Stephen turned, put himself unconsciously between them.

“Hey, Tony,” Rogers said quietly, not taking up very much room for a man of his stature.

“Cap,” Tony said behind him, a little stiff.

Stephen stepped forward into the room, bringing attention to himself and off of his patient. 

“Captain Rogers. We haven’t officially met.” He held out a hand, trembling only slightly. “Doctor Stephen Strange. Master of the Mystic Arts and Protector of this Sanctum.”

Rogers noticed the tremor, and when he shook Stephen’s hand, it was firm but careful.

“I don’t know what exactly you did back there with your hands,” Rogers began, and his eyes moved to Tony again. There was something old and sad in those eyes. “But whatever it was, _thank you_.”

Unexpectedly, Stephen smiled. Rogers mirrored it tenfold.

“It’s good to meet you, Doctor.”

“Likewise, Captain. _Tony_ ,” Stephen suddenly snapped without turning around. “You’re _my_ patient, you stay on that table.”

There was a noise behind him, unmistakably Tony shifting back onto the makeshift operating table.

Rogers laughed, something almost sad. “He’s stubborn, huh?”

“I’m sure I have no idea,” Stephen drawled, smirking. “What did you need, Captain?”

“We need a plan,” Rogers said, and he settled very easily into a dominant stance—not domineering, just something tall and authoritative, someone to whom giving orders came as second nature. “And I think it’s best if we get everyone in the same room for that. Not to take your patient from you—”

“Can you give him ten minutes?” Stephen asked, lowering his voice. “I don’t think I can overstate just how taxing something like the gauntlet is on an ordinary human body.”

The small way Rogers smiled indicated how much he (and Stephen) knew Tony wasn’t exactly an ordinary human.

“Okay. I’ll try. But there’s a few of them I know aren’t gonna listen to me.”

“Thank you,” Stephen sighed.

“Just… take care of him,” Rogers said, his own voice low, before he turned out of the room. “Ten minutes, Doctor.”

After a tense moment, Stephen let out the breath he’d apparently been holding in. 

“Yeah, that about sums him up, I think,” Tony said from his perch.

Stephen turned, smirked. “I think he’s happy to see you alive.”

“News to me,” Tony grumbled, looking sour.

“Well, the end of the universe can change a lot of things,” Stephen supplied, returning to Tony’s side and forming the configuration for the healing spell again. He ran the light slowly up Tony’s arm, and the burns—while not completely disappearing—healed. “What I mean is—it can change a person’s priorities.”

“You can say that again,” Tony laughed, and Stephen could _feel_ Tony’s eyes on him.

Stephen took a breath through his nose, gaze lingering just for one more long second on Tony’s exposed chest. “I think it’s time you get a new shirt.”

“Are you kidding? That stupid thing’s like a badge of honor, now.”

“It’s badly burnt, and it’s hideous.”

“It’s a work of art. I’m framing it.”

A smile blossomed wide on Stephen’s face, and his stomach twisted into half a dozen knots. He opened his mouth, and it almost came spilling out of him. _I love you._ But it didn’t. It stuck in his throat. Tony saw it in his face (Stephen knew how obvious he was, he’d seen it before). And it almost seemed like Tony was waiting, hanging on his unsaid words.

“I’ll be right back,” he said instead.

When Stephen reentered the artifact room, the New York Rangers hoodie he’d used for espionage slung over one arm, he found Peter perched on the opposite end of the operating table from Tony, his young face immeasurably happy; Colonel James Rhodes, still in the War Machine armor, standing beside Tony with a grin nearly as wide as his face; Rogers, leaning on Stephen’s desk with his arms crossed; Romanoff and Wong by the door, and Nebula pacing the room in hurried steps.

“I tried,” Rogers said when he caught sight of Stephen.

“I’ll take your word for it,” Stephen sighed, and he laid the hoodie in Tony’s lap. “Make yourself decent,” he added with a wink.

“Hey!” Quill’s voice broke through the proceedings, and he shouldered his way into the room past Wong and Romanoff. “Don’t think I didn’t miss you guys sneaking off for your super secret Avengers meeting. _Captain_ Peter Quill, by the way, for anyone who doesn’t know.”

Stephen smirked. “It’s good to see you, Quill.”

Disarmed and taken aback, Quill squinted oddly at him. “Yeah. I guess it’s good to see you, too.”

“We are wasting time,” Nebula finally cut in, snapping to with a harshness that made the whole room jump. “The Iron Man is healed enough to move, and so we should.”

“She’s right,” Rogers said, and he stood to his full height. “Tony’s got the gauntlet, but Thanos is still a threat to the universe without it. We need to find him, and we need to stop him. For good.”

“Are you suggesting that we arrest Thanos?” Romanoff asked dryly.

“No,” Rogers said, as if the idea were just as ludicrous as it sounded. “I don’t think that’s an option anymore.”

“Okay,” Romanoff continued, and she crossed her arms. “So we’re gonna kill Thanos. It’d be nice if we knew where he was.”

“Where you left him, perhaps?” Wong asked.

“Last thing I remember was Tony getting that gauntlet,” Rogers supplemented. “And then we’re here. So, maybe yes—probably not.”

“So, how do you find him?” Peter asked, peering from face to face.

“Oh, me,” Tony said suddenly as he tugged on the hoodie with Rhodes’ assistance, as casual as a man that had been blown up could possibly be. “I can.” He forced the gauntlet through the sleeve of the sweatshirt, and once he had, he waggled the large golden fingers playfully. “Pretty sure I can find anyone with this thing. I could find your homecoming date,” he said with a grin, looking right at Stephen. “Was she cute?”

“ _Tony_ ,” Stephen growled, pinching the bridge of his nose. Great. He was blushing in front of Captain America. He tried to force that look into something concerned. “You’re not using that thing again.”

“Why not? I think I’m finally getting it figured out.” Tony tapped the soul stone with his free hand. “Finding one guy is probably gonna be a hell of a lot easier than bringing half the universe back to life.”

“Tony,” Stephen continued, more firmly, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to use the stones so soon after you _almost died_.”

“Wait, so who’s this guy?” Rhodes asked—no malice in his tone, just genuine confusion.

“Oh, that’s Doctor Strange,” Tony said proudly. “Wizard, stonekeeper, generally okay guy when you get half a box of wine in him.”

“Stonekeeper?” Rogers asked, his head swiveling to pin Stephen. “Wait, you had an Infinity Stone? How did Thanos get it?”

Stephen opened his mouth, and with the spotlight suddenly shining hard and hot on him, he found himself at a loss for words. He’d just _given_ the stone to Thanos, just handed it over so that trillions of people would die—so that these people would have to _watch_ as the people they loved turned to ash around them.

“He saved my life,” Tony said plainly. He was _looking_ at Stephen, soft and quiet, but that gaze held strong even if Stephen couldn’t bring himself to meet it. Tony took a sharp breath and continued. “And, if you think about it, he really saved _everyone’s_ lives, ‘cause that got the gauntlet on my hand. So give him a break.”

“You’re not leaving,” Stephen said, very suddenly and very harsh. 

The room fell absolutely silent.

“Like hell I’m not,” Tony snapped back, and with a grunt he managed to make it off the table. “I’m fine.”

“You want to bring the gauntlet right back to Thanos?” Stephen argued, stepping in closer. “He could rip your arm right out of its socket to get that back.”

“And I won’t let him,” Tony bit back. “And _you_ won’t let me let him. I’ve gotten three of these stones to work—”

“And almost died doing it!” Stephen argued.

“Yeah, _almost_ ,” Tony cut in. “As in, I’m still kicking. _As in_ , kicking Titan ass.”

“Hell yeah,” Quill muttered just loud enough for Stephen to hear it. And Stephen glared just hard enough to get Quill to back down, holding up his hands in surrender as he said: “Hey, isn’t that thing strong enough to just nuke that big purple asshole from anywhere in the galaxy?”

“Probably,” Tony mused, holding the gauntlet up for observation. “Wanna be the guinea pig, Quill?”

“The less we rely on the stones,” Stephen interrupted, “the better. We’ve seen what they can do.”

“We know what _Thanos_ can do with them,” Nebula answered. “The Iron Man is a different matter.”

“Depends on who you talk to,” Rhodes chuckled, and Tony just elbowed him.

“I say we go for it,” Romanoff said out of nowhere. The attention of the room turned to her, and she didn’t balk from it. “We’d have the drop on him, if we used the gauntlet to find him. With a small strike force, we could take him down without dragging everyone into it. And the stones could be our backup plan if we can’t take him by ourselves. Simple.”

“And who is on your strike force?” Nebula asked, squaring up.

“People in this room,” Romanoff continued. “Stark, you can vouch for Strange and Quill?”

“Strange, yeah,” Tony began. “Quill gets an A for effort.”

“C’mon, man,” Quill growled, stepping up. “If anyone deserves a chance a sticking it to this guy, its me. Maybe Nebula. Definitely not Spider Kid.”

“Spider- _Man_ ,” Peter grumbled.

“Pete, go home,” Tony said suddenly.

“What?!” Peter cried. “After you just told Mister Strange he can’t tell you what to do? How’s that for double standards?”

“You’re a _kid_ , we’re grown-ups,” Tony snapped.

“And I was there on that planet, too! I helped fight him once, I can—”

“I’m not letting you die again!” Tony finally shouted, and both of them froze. And, as Tony was wont to do, he barreled on. “Not on my watch. Not if I can do anything about it this time.”

Peter’s face dissolved into understanding, slow and sad. Tony tried (and failed) to hide the emotion bubbling up through him.

“Go home. Take care of your aunt. We’ll be fine.”

Without another moment of hesitation, Peter launched himself at Tony, grabbed him into a hard embrace—Tony uttering a surprised little “oof” at the contact. But he held him there, just long enough. Peter pulled away, and he fixed Stephen with half a smile.

“I guess I’ll take care of New York while you guys are out,” Peter said, tugging on his cowl.

“No one I’d trust more than the friendly neighborhood Spider-Man,” Tony said, hiding any emotion by clearing his throat. “So, go already.”

Reluctantly, Peter slipped through the nearest window, leaving only eight people left in the artifact room. Tony, Stephen, and Wong standing by the operating table; Rogers, Rhodes, and Romanoff by the door; and Quill and Nebula between them.

“We should do this now,” Rogers said, coming up alongside Tony and Stephen, “before everyone downstairs gets wind of it.”

“Captain America going off script,” Tony laughed almost bitterly. “Big surprise.”

“Tony—” Rogers began, but he bit off the end of his own sentence. He started again. “You don’t have to do this.”

And Tony took a long, hard breath, staring Rogers down. Finally, his shoulders settled into something strong, firm. “Maybe not. But I’m going to. And you’re all coming with me.”

Rogers grinned, and he held out his hand. Tony clapped his hand firmly in Rogers, and they shook once.

“Wong,” Stephen began, but his friend already had both of his hands held before him in surrender.

“I know. Protect the Sanctum. I can’t promise I won’t evict your friends if they make too much trouble.”

A little smirk sat oddly on Stephen’s face, and all he could find to do was nod.

He turned, caught the rest of their cobbled-together strike force making their preparations. Quill and Nebula checking their weapons, Romanoff charging the shock in her bracers, Rhodes running through the ammunition he had left. Rodgers looking at Stephen and Tony out of the corner of his eye.

“Hey,” Tony said quietly in Stephen’s ear, and the sorcerer turned. “Sorry for getting you volunteered.”

“Tony,” Stephen sighed, resting a hand on Tony’s shoulder (an effective way to get him to stop talking, Stephen noted). “I told you that you’d never have to worry about being alone.”

“I don’t know what’s gonna happen,” Tony said, looking up at Stephen in a way that made his insides to somersaults.

“Neither do I,” Stephen answered, trying not to look at Tony like he was every star in the sky—the sun and the moon and everything important in between. By the smile spreading on Tony’s face, Stephen had failed at that, too.

“At least we’re both flying blind this time,” Tony said with a smirk.

“Tony, I—”

But Tony held up one finger between them, halting Stephen’s words, and pressed that finger to his own mouth. He winked once, and then held up the gauntlet. Clenched his fist, and the soul stone shone like a star.

Tony grimaced through the effort, blinked, and for just a moment, his brown eyes had gone orange. He blinked again, and he was back.

“Got ‘em,” he murmured, grinning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is. the longest chapter. there are so many characters. I hope it's not tedious, and I hope the new characters aren't completely ooc. Also, I want to point out right now that I'm not one of those ironstrange folks that hates Steve. I acknowledge his faults, but I still love Steve Rogers. So there will be no Steve bashing here.


	19. showdown

The space stone seemed like easy work for Tony, comparatively, once Stephen had explained the general idea of the sling ring—relatively similar concept, but on a much larger scale. The concept wasn’t particularly difficult to grasp for someone that had brought back half of the universe and _not_ died from it.

“Okay, let’s get going,” Tony said. “Not looking forward to explaining to Thor why he couldn’t come on our Titan-hunting trip.” He motioned the others over, then leveled his eyes at Stephen. “Hold on to me. Not sure if I’ll disappear or make a tunnel or whatever.”

Stephen nodded, and he held on tightly to Tony’s shoulder. He locked eyes with Rogers, who seemed to take the hint and took hold of Tony’s other shoulder. Soon, the seven of them had formed a rudimentary chain with Tony and the gauntlet at the head.

Tony held the gauntlet out in front of him, eyes squeezed shut from the effort of concentration. He let out the breath as he smashed his hand into a fist, and the space stone glowed an eerie blue.

It wasn’t entirely unlike the sling ring in that it conjured a portal for them. But instead of existing as a doorway itself, the portal from the gauntlet seemed to swallow the seven of them, drawing them into itself and spitting them out at their destination—rather more violently than someone with more practice with the stone might have done.

They tumbled together onto rough ground, sending clouds of dust flying at their impact. Rogers was immediately on his feet, scouting for any sign of their target. Stephen leant his arm to Tony, who gladly took the help to take his feet.

“Alien planet, huh?” Romanoff said as she brushed herself off—her cool demeanor had been flushed away by something cold and strange. 

“Okay,” Rhodes breathed, his eye on the alien sky overhead. “Not terrifying at all.”

“Wait,” Quill protested immediately, looking around with his arms thrown up in confusion. “ _Titan_? I just got off this shitty planet!”

“How did he get back to Titan without the gauntlet?” Nebula asked, leveling her black eyes at Tony.

“He didn’t,” Tony said calmly, and he formed whatever nanites were left into a patchwork set of Iron Man armor—an arm for the hand not protected by the gauntlet, a chestplate, boots and repulsors for his feet. 

“What do you mean?” Rogers asked, looking from Stephen to Tony (as if the sorcerer had anything to say about what Tony did or didn’t do).

“I get to choose where we fight this asshole,” Tony growled. “We’re not risking anyone else’s lives, not when I get to say anything about it. There’s no innocent people we can put in danger on Titan, and we can all breathe here. This is where we’re making our stand, and if you’ve got a problem, I’m sure I can whip up someone else to take your place on our little strike force, Cap.”

“Don’t let that thing go to your head, Tony,” Rogers warned, but he backed off regardless.

“Hey,” Rhodes began, lifting the War Machine helmet to protect his face. “Without those stones, are bullets even gonna work on this guy?”

“How many bullets do you have?” Nebula asked, cracking her knuckles. 

“Yeah, that doesn’t sound promising,” Rhodes grumbled. “The things I do to look out for you,” he added, nodding to Tony.

Stephen saw the little smirk on Tony’s face, something soft. He wiped away with a hard breath and held up the gauntlet again. “Okay, everyone ready?”

“Wait, wait,” Rogers cut in, stepping between Tony and Stephen. “We can’t fly blind into this, or he’s gonna take us out one by one. We need a plan.”

“Yeah, no,” Tony sighed, “planning isn’t something they do.” He nodded to Quill and Nebula, the former trying to pump himself up with little aerobic hopping motions, and the latter staring at icily them with her jaw clenched.

“You told me how that went down the last time,” Rogers said, frowning hard at Tony. 

“It happened exactly how it was supposed to,” Stephen cut in firmly.

Rogers spun to fix Stephen with a confused look, and the sorcerer held his ground.

“Long story, Cap,” Tony said softly, his eyes locking with Stephen’s over Rogers’ shoulder. Stephen shot Tony a little smirk, which brought a syrupy little grin to Tony’s face.

“The stone that I was the keeper of,” Stephen said, trying not to fall into the trap of Tony’s eyes, “was the time stone, Captain. You can say there are certain things I had advanced knowledge of.”

Rogers bristled. “The time stone’s the reason we lost Vision.”

“The time stone is the reason any of you are here,” Stephen said, raising his voice. “If I hadn’t given Thanos the stone, Tony was going to die. And if Tony died, we’d never get that goddamn gauntlet off Thanos’ hand and we’d _all_ be dead.” 

He was looming somehow over the soldier despite having maybe half the muscle mass. And he realized, suddenly, that the Cloak of Levitation had returned and was lifting him just so slightly off the ground, enough to be an approximation of intimidation.

It was badly damaged, torn almost completely in two by Thanos—ages ago during their first battle on this godforsaken planet. It was wounded, but it had still found him, and wrapped protectively around his shoulders.

“Hey!” Tony said almost cheerfully, grinning as the hem of the cloak grabbed at Tony’s arm and pulled him closer to itself—and Stephen. “I thought Thanos tore you to shreds.”

Rogers was watching them tactically, his eyes scanning and picking up rows and rows of information in a glance. That was the look of a man who was used to making battlefield decisions, someone who could work with very little to produce results. Someone who knew how to see something big out of something small.

The captain sucked in a small breath, and the fight had gone out of him. Whatever he had gleaned, it was enough to get him to back off.

“All right, listen up,” Rogers said loudly, and he turned away from Tony and Stephen to face the rest of them. Rhodes and Romanoff didn’t exactly stand at attention, but they were used to working with Rogers, and he had their interest. Reluctantly, Nebula and Quill turned to listen—both of them on edge, ready.

“We’re bringing the fight to us. Whatever upper hand we have by taking him by surprise can’t be wasted on sloppy tactics. I don’t care if you work well with others,” he said directly to Quill, who responded with a childish sneer, “we’re together on this. We all want one thing. An end to this.”

“Hey,” Quill snapped, his jovial face suddenly and terribly serious. “I don’t care why you want him dead. He killed the only person I’ll probably ever love.”

Rogers lowered his shoulders, and his stance became almost instantly more accessible.

“I’m sorry,” Rogers said, honesty seeping out of him like he’d been stabbed. “I didn’t know.”

Even Quill was taken aback, and he crossed his arms defensively without a proper reaction to human decency. “I guess it’s okay, since I have literally no idea who you are.”

Rogers sighed, smirking good-naturedly. Stephen understood—he’d been with Quill long enough to barely put up with his antics. “Colonel James Rhodes,” he said, pointing to the War Machine. “Natasha Romanoff,” he added, pointing to the deadly assassin. “Steve Rogers.” He chucked a thumb backwards at his own chest. Short and simple.

Quill laughed childishly. “Right, like Captain America?”

Rogers and Tony exchanged a glance, and all eyes focused back on Quill. 

“Um, yeah, exactly like Captain America,” Tony said.

Quill blanked for a long moment before the revelation hit him like a truck. “ _What?!_ I thought you were—how did you—I had your action figure, dude!”

If Stephen thought Captain Rogers capable of blushing, he might have, just then. He waved off the blustering praise from Quill and tried to reestablish order (definitely ignoring the grin on Romanoff’s face—she was going to use this information later).

“Everyone into attack formation,” Rogers said, directing the others into flank and backup positions. He faltered when he came to Stephen—he must really not have known anything about the abilities of a Master of the Mystic Arts.

“You focus on Thanos,” Stephen said firmly. “I’ll make sure nothing happens to Tony—to the gauntlet,” he corrected himself very awkwardly.

Despite his fumble, Rogers nodded (the smallest smirk on his face the only indication that he’d caught exactly what Stephen had meant).

“We’re ready, Tony,” Rogers said.

Tony nodded. “Let’s finish this son-of-a-bitch.”

Both the space stone and the soul stone came to life when Tony clenched the gauntlet tight—though battered and broken, the gauntlet still worked perfectly. The effort brought Tony to a knee, and Stephen came to the ground beside him to be sure he wasn’t going to hurt himself again.

They didn’t have long to wait. A portal like the one they’d come through to get back to Titan appeared, and with an orange flash of light, Thanos himself materialized through it.

Still standing feet taller than any of them, still huge and menacing, still the one that had snapped his fingers to end the lives of trillions across the universe. No less intimidating despite the axe wound in his chest, no less frightening without the gauntlet.

He barely had time to register his sudden relocation before Rogers was upon him, already swinging—Romanoff flanking from behind with her stun-projectiles and Rhodes firing from his shoulder-mounted gun.

Thanos blocked Rogers’ attacks despite his confusion, turned just as Romanoff swung her baton at the back of his head and knocked her aside as though she were an insect. Rhodes gave a verbal warning before he loaded a rocket to his arm cannon and fired. The small explosion engulfed the Titan for one moment, and the next Thanos had burst out of the cloud of smoke at Rhodes.

“Okay, maybe I shoulda stayed on Earth for this one,” Rhodes cracked, boosting backwards out of the way of Thanos’ fist.

Tony surged urgently forward, but Stephen’s hand on his wrist held him back. Tony turned sharply, fixed the sorcerer with a hard glare.

“Hey!” Tony snapped. “That’s my best friend out there!”

Stephen searched Tony’s eyes in an instant, and he realized there was nothing he could do. He could try his best, but Tony was never going to stay by the sidelines. He was going to run into danger, push his luck, protect those that needed protecting. And Stephen couldn’t stop him. He didn’t _want_ to stop him. That determination, that selflessness in the face of his own mortality, was something so inherently _Tony_ that taking it from him would keep him from being the Tony that he’d fallen in love with.

So, instead, he smirked. He couldn’t keep Tony out of danger. But he could go running into it with him, side by side. And Tony saw it in Stephen’s face, and he grinned to match.

They didn’t have to say anything to each other. Stephen conjured a shield in one hand and his sabre in the other, the cloak doing its best to keep him aloft; Tony lifted off and launched himself at Thanos, firing repulsor blasts as a distraction as they two of them entered the fray. It was enough to take attention off of Rhodes and focus it on the two of them.

“Stark!” Thanos growled, his eyes piercing the two of them.

“Miss us?” Tony snapped, blasting at Thanos to keep him on his toes.

Stephen’s shield blocked a punch meant for Tony, and he moved in with the sabre—pushed the Titan further and further back from the gauntlet. It was the least he could do.

From behind, Stephen saw Quill and Nebula launching into the fray—she gripped onto him, and he blasted them forward with the boosters on his boots. Her angry cry gave them away, and Thanos gave one last angry kick in Stephen’s direction—barely blocked with the shield, knocking the sorcerer back to where Tony stood.

Thanos whipped a hand out and grabbed Nebula from the air, his huge fingers locking around her comparatively frail body. She screamed—not out of fear, but of rage; frustration boiled out of her, slamming her fists into Thanos’ hand as it slowly closed around her.

Rogers barked out an order for everyone to stand down, and the battle came very quickly to a standstill.

Thanos stood in the middle of a circle of his enemies, a struggling and furious Nebula held in one huge hand. The Titan dragged his eyes across those gathered to fight against him, not an ounce of emotion readable on his face. His eyes finally landed on Tony, on the gauntlet and the stones still affixed within it. Stephen found himself standing just so slightly in front of Tony, his grip on his sabre so hard as to make his knuckles white.

“So,” Thanos said calmly—sadly—despite his frantic captive beating on his fist. “It’s undone, then?”

“You didn’t do _shit_ , the universe is back to business as usual,” Tony snapped, stepping up until he was directly behind Stephen, a hand on the sorcerer’s shoulder. “Put her down!”

Thanos didn’t put her down. He gave her one cursory glance, and then turned his attention back to Tony.

“First, you destroy the only good I’ve done for this universe. And now, you come to finish me.” Some odd look overcame Thanos’ face, scrutinizing Tony with a mix of emotion (confusion, respect). “And yet you haven’t. You have the power to undo me completely, but you hesitate. If you believe that’s what is _truly_ right, why haven’t you?”

Before he could get an answer, Romanoff had leapt up to his arm and stabbed a short blade right into the soft flesh on the inside of his wrist. 

Thanos gave a pained grunt and dropped Nebula from his relentless grip. Even before she could gather herself, Nebula gave a horrible cry and launched herself back at Thanos, her blade seeking anything it could bite into. Romanoff dropped from Thanos’ arm just in time to pull Nebula out of the way of a kick that would have sent her flying.

It seemed that negotiations were over.

Stephen and Tony locked eyes, and in the same fluid movement, both of them summoned their shields. Blue and orange mandalas burst to life at the same time, and together, they launched back into battle.

 _Protect Tony_ , that was Stephen’s only plan. He couldn’t keep Tony and the gauntlet out of the battle, but he could do his best to keep the focus on himself.

Romanoff was the first to go down. Stephen didn’t see what happened to her, but Rogers’ attention went immediately to her, and the battle moved on without them. Quill and Nebula were sent flying, out of sight by the time Thanos moved on to Rhodes. The War Machine armor was more nimble than expected, keeping him just barely out of Thanos’ reach as he also tried to keep the focus off of Tony.

Stephen drove in with the sabre, drawing a cut here and there as he weaved out of the way of flying fists, of repulsor blasts. He blocked huge, heavy fists with his shield, feeling the reverberation of the impact every time through his limbs.

But finally, it caught up with him. Finally, Stephen was too slow. Raised his shield at just the wrong time, and Thanos’ fist cracked hard—right into his chest, where the sharp pain of ribs cracking brought a scream bubbling to his throat, where it was trapped by the sudden shock. He was thrown into the dust, flat on his back. All he managed was a shuddering gasp before he could throw up one weak shield. It was barely enough to make Thanos’ next swing glance off of it, and like a broken bulb, his spell flickered out.

A spinning blue shield mandala struck Thanos hard in the side of the face, throwing off his trajectory to slam his fist into the dust beside Stephen’s dazed head.

Tony landed by Stephen, standing over him, a shield in one hand and the gauntlet in the other. Shaking—with anger, with fear, with barely-contained rage.

“Get the _fuck_ away from him,” Tony growled through gritted teeth, his eyes furious and desperate.

Even from the ground, Stephen could see Thanos smirking. And he raised his fist again.

With one fluid, practiced move, Tony blew his shield wide, caught the swing with trained ease, and batted it away like it was nothing. And with Thanos caught mid-swing, Tony blasted himself forward on his repulsors at the Titan, and punched his shield fist hard into the unmissable target that was Thanos’ face.

And Tony swung again, denting the runes of his mandala—they flickered and died, but he mechanically summoned two more to replace it. Threw open the fist with his repulsor and charged the blast right through his spell, blasting Thanos backward into the sheer rock face of a cliff.

Then Tony was back on him, swinging his fists and blocking blows with his shields, ignoring the thumping of Thanos’s knuckles into his side in favor of sheer, bloody violence.

Tony clenched the hand with the gauntlet, and the power stone glowed ominously, his suddenly terrifying face illuminated by the light off the stone. The gauntlet cracked into Thanos’ face with an explosion of energy that knocked both combatants backward—Thanos crashing into the cliff and shattering pieces of rock from the impact, and Tony tumbling into the dust alongside Stephen.

Thanos heaved himself to his feet, breathing labored as if his whole body had felt that explosive impact—it probably had.

At the same time, Tony lifted himself up on one elbow, grimacing from the effort—the pain, the ache of his limbs from using so much of his remaining energy on the power stone. He was ready to go again, to leap back into the fray with every stone.

Stephen’s hand was heavy on Tony’s wrist, enough to bring pause to Tony’s rage. Tony took a sharp breath, looked down with a horrified expression. Stephen had the strength to pull himself up into a sitting position, but even then had to lean on Tony’s arm to keep from flopping back in the dust. Even breathing hurt.

They locked eyes, a scared little thing. Stephen shook his head—he wasn’t going to die, not yet. But he placed a hand over the stones of the gauntlet, blocking the way the light shined through them. Tony nodded slowly, and all the anger in his face drained away. Left only concern behind, with a taste of adoration. 

Tony ran his fingers through Stephen’s hair, kissed the top of his head, and was back on his feet.

Thanos and Tony Stark faced down one another like cowboys on a dusty western street at high noon. Thanos was bleeding, more than just a drop this time. He wasn’t a pushover without the stones, that much was for sure, but even he couldn’t stand up to a full-on assault from the power stone. He heaved in his breath, holding his middle with one arm loose by his side—possibly broken.

“You’re starting to understand, aren’t you, Stark?” Thanos asked seriously. There was no self-satisfied smile, no grinning bravado. Just a solemn understanding. “Understand what _good_ you can do with the stones.”

“I’m not like you,” Tony snarled. “I don’t kill trillions of people for fun.”

“Fun?” Thanos said sadly, and he took a moment to breathe. “Do you think I enjoyed doing what I did? That I took great pleasure from it?” He shook his huge head, wincing at the pain from Tony’s attack with the power stone. “I did what had to be done, no more or less than you and your friends.”

“Don’t pretend you’re some kind of messiah,” Tony snapped. “You’re a _murderer_. Vision and Gamora are never coming back, and I’m sure there’s a couple thousand more you killed before you started your little quest.”

Finally, the Titan smirked, just a small thing. “So you’ll take no pleasure in killing me?”

“I didn’t say that,” Tony laughed bitterly. “You’re sure as hell not gonna like it.”

“Then do it, Stark,” Thanos said heavily, and he raised a hand in front of him—the hand that Tony had taken the gauntlet off of—and crushed it into a hard fist. “Clench your fist, and I’ll disappear. You can tear me from the very fabric of the universe with one finger. With one command, you could make it so I never exist.”

Tony held up the gauntlet, examined it with a sharp eye. Each of the stones catching the light in a different way.

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” Tony remarked cooly, and he dropped his arm back to his side. “But I don’t think I’ll rob her of the satisfaction.”

From the top of the cliff face behind Thanos, with Quill and his boosters shooting her downward at impressive speed, Nebula rammed her blade into the back of Thanos’ neck—through his spinal cord, all the way through muscle and bone to protrude from his throat on the other side. 

The force of their combined attack sent all three combatants to the ground, and Quill rolled away to the side as Nebula caught herself with a practiced, acrobatic move. Thanos staggered—horrible, wet choking noises all he could produce around the blood spilling out of him.

There was no snappy one-liner. No furious banter. She didn’t say anything at all. She only strode up to the man who called himself her father as he struggled for breath around her blade. Crouched down to look him in the eyes—made sure that he saw her, seething with fury and satisfaction. And she wrenched the blade out of his neck, sideways, severing sinew and flesh.

Thanos lay at her feet, bleeding out on the dead planet he had once called home. He deserved no more fanfare than that.

“It is done,” she whispered, for the first time in any timeline that Stephen had seen showing any emotion other than rage. There was a sadness to her voice, something thick that stuck in her throat. Not for _him,_ , but for the woman he’d taken from them.

Tony took a sharp breath, the sound of relief and release in his voice when he said: “Everyone still here? Sound off.”

“You sound like Steve,” he heard Rhodes say over the communicator in the War Machine armor.

“If you can’t say something nice,” Tony chided him. 

“I’m all right,” came the voice of Rogers himself. “But Nat’s wounded.”

“Quill?”

The man in question nodded, but for once didn’t open his mouth. His eyes hung on what had once been Thanos, his face set with determination but his eyes clouded with tears. He held a hand firmly on Nebula’s shoulder, and though she tensed at first (and she didn’t look at him once), she nodded.

“Stephen?” Tony asked, turning away from whatever moment the two of them were having.

“I’m okay,” Stephen breathed, and found that breathing was rather more difficult than he remembered. The arm that he’d been using to prop himself up was shaking entirely too much, and he collapsed back in the dust when it gave out under him.

“Stephen!” he heard Tony call out, and with the sound of his repulsors, Tony was crouching over him in the work of a moment. The light haloed his frazzled hair, his frantic face.

“Maybe I’m not so okay,” Stephen murmured, looking up at that face. 

“You’re fine,” Tony murmured, a hand hovering over Stephen’s prone form. “We’re done here, we’ll get you to the Sanctum.” He tried a weak smile. “I’ll get to patch you up, this time, Doc.”

A strange giddiness seized Stephen, and he grinned despite the taste of blood. “I love you.”

It was the first time he’d said the words out loud, in that order, and he was just woozy enough to not particularly care that half of the Avengers just heard him. But it was worth it for the red, shocked look on Tony’s face over him.

The last words Stephen heard before passing out from the pain were from Rhodes, who only uttered a confused: “Wait, what did he say?”

+++

Stephen woke with a gasp, and the pain in his ribs that came with it. The cloak, barely suspending itself in its wounded state, hovered near him in something almost like concern.

“Hey, hey,” he heard Tony say from somewhere just outside his vision, and soon the man himself had appeared—standing over him with his hands out to attempt to placate him. “You’re okay. You’re back.”

“I know what my own Sanctum looks like,” Stephen grumbled, happily looking up at Tony from his back—the old surgery table he’d wheeled out, he figured.

“Oh, good, your sarcasm is still working,” Tony laughed, smoothed Stephen’s hair back from his forehead. 

“Where is everyone?” Stephen asked—he tried to get up on one elbow, but Tony pressed him insistently back down.

“I convinced everyone to stay at the Avengers Compound until we can sort through the fallout,” Tony told him. “Cap’s looking after them. He’s…” he frowned, just slightly, then smirked. “... something.”

“If they’re at the compound,” Stephen said, pulling in a long, painful breath, “what are you still doing here?”

“You’re truly screwed, Stephen Strange,” Tony said with a smile. “Because you’re _my_ patient, now.”

“God help me,” Stephen drawled, and when Tony laughed, all he could do was smile upward at him—absolutely beaming. Tony broke eye contact first.

“I, um,” he said nervously. “I got Wong to help—got me a book—and, well—”

Stephen felt his grin morph into a low, slow smirk—spreading like syrup over his face. Seeing Tony Stark at a loss for words was something rare enough to savor. And he must have known it, because _Tony_ was the one going red in the face this time.

“Shut up,” Tony urged, even though Stephen hadn’t said anything. “Just—let me take care of you, for once.”

He leaned backwards to the book open on Stephen’s desk, and when he returned, there was an unrivaled look of concentration in his eyes. Focused on the configuration of his free hand, on his breathing, pooling his energy into his palm.

Golden light surged out of Tony’s hand, and it took some effort to keep it trained in his palm. The same spell Stephen had just used on Tony. Tony was healing him.

Stephen felt a surge of emotion through him at the same time that the aching from his ribs dimmed. Tony definitely saw, judging by the proud smile growing on his lips. 

“What’d I tell you?” Tony asked, keeping his hand as still as possible over Stephen’s wounds. “I’m a prodigy.”

“Humble, too,” Stephen joked.

After a moment, Stephen was able to lift himself into a sitting position, and Tony shook the healing spell out of his hand. They sat in amicable silence for one long moment, just watching one another with equally proud expressions. Stephen’s faded, just slightly, and he broke their eye contact to find something terribly interesting on the ceiling.

“Tony, I shouldn’t have said—” Stephen began, his throat tightening.

“But you did,” Tony cut him off. “It’s okay. It’s… it’s fine. If I can figure out how to control the stones, I think we can figure… _this_ out.”

“So,” Stephen asked, drawing it out. “There’s a _this_?”

“God, what are we, teenagers?” Tony laughed.

“Sometimes you make me wonder,” Stephen added, smirking to meet him. His eyes lingered for a very long time on Tony’s, would have loved to simply stay there. Just the two of them. “You should go, Tony.”

Tony’s eyebrows shot up—questioning, confused, worried, offended.

“They need you more than I do,” Stephen finished. “The Avengers, the Guardians… I don’t know if they’ve told you, but I’ve seen it millions of times. They respect you. Some of them even love you. Rogers might be able to lead them in battle, but _you’re_ who they look up to.”

Tony wasn’t smiling, not even sarcastically. He shrugged, his eyes fixed on the ground. Stephen tipped Tony’s chin up, made him meet him in the eyes.

“Go on. I’ll be here.” Stephen smiled for him, and Tony finally broke into a smirk of his own.

“Okay, Doc,” Tony said, barely managing through a throat full of words he didn’t say.

Tony clenched his fist, and the whirling blue portal appeared to swallow him up. 

After a long, silent, moment, Stephen ran both hands over his face, shaking with weak, tipsy laughter. The gauntlet. He’d managed to somehow completely forget about the universe’s most powerful weapon while he was lost in Tony Stark’s eyes. That man was going to kill him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I lied. this one is the longest chapter. oh man oh jeez. it's just... Thanos, yanno? I hope it doesn't suck...  
> Next chapter is the last one. Sorry for sneaking it up on you! I have loved every second of writing this fic, guys, and you've made it totally worth it. Thank you so much for every kindhearted word.


	20. loose ends

“You’re not keeping it.”

Tony smirked, admiring Stephen like he was sure the sorcerer didn’t see him (he did). Stephen nodded infinitesimally at the others, as if to say _not in front of Captain America_. He watched Tony’s smile grow—how had they come to know what the other was thinking just by watching?

“No, but don’t you think it’d make a really cool art piece?” Tony asked, crossing his arms to observe the Infinity Gauntlet. “Really avante-garde, or something.”

The housing Tony had constructed for the gauntlet was just slightly opaque, not enough to hide the enticing gleam of the stones within. A patented Stark lock on the front, and glowing with arcane energy imbued by Stephen.

“You don’t think throwing it into a star or something would be better?” Quill asked, glaring hard as if trying to melt the gauntlet through the heat of his stare alone.

“What exactly do you think would happen when the equivalent of billions of nuclear warheads hit these babies?” Tony asked, waving a hand at the gauntlet. “No way. This is easier until we find a way to get the stones out and get rid of ‘em one by one.”

“Hey, since when did you become the boss of us?” Quill sniped.

“When I pulled your asses out of the soul stone with my bare hands,” Tony snapped right back. “This is the best option until we find a way to destroy these things. And _you_ ,” he continued, pointing at Quill directly, “are gonna help. When you’re out there in space, doing _whatever the hell_ you people do out there, you keep an ear to the ground on any info you can scrounge up about the stones.”

“Anything at all to suggest a way to destroy them safely,” Stephen added.

“Okay, okay,” Quill waved them both down. “But not because you asked. ‘Cause you helped us get rid of that purple son-of-a-bitch.”

“So you owe us,” Tony said, grinning.

“No!” Quill protested, but with the combined eyes of his crew on him, he wilted only a little. “Maybe!”

“I will go with the Guardians,” Thor announced. “Thanos murdered half of the surviving Asgardians, but the other half is still alive somewhere in the galaxy. I must find them, and we must find a way to rid the universe of these stones.”

“You’re not still in a _mood_ about not getting to kill Thanos, are you?” Tony asked.

“I am _very much_ in a mood, Stark,” Thor replied. “But you’re forgiven. Besides,” he turned to the Guardians, smiling. “These gentle morons need a leader.”

Quill’s face dropped into disgust, but he had very little to say about it as Thor and his massive axe approached the whole crew of them.

“And call me again when the next cosmic menace threatens the fabric of the universe,” Thor said over his shoulder to the Avengers.

“ _Call_ you?” Tony asked, bewildered, and was cut off by the immense light and noise of the Bifrost whisking the King of Asgard and his new crew away, leaving circular runes burning in the grass of the compound.

Tony sighed, and he rolled his eyes at Stephen. “Hate it when he does that.” He sucked in a breath, then held a thumb up in the sorcerer’s direction. “Ready?”

Stephen nodded, and he motioned for the others to follow him into the compound.

“In theory, the only people who should be on these grounds are the Avengers, or anyone you trust,” Stephen said, and he presented his hands into a strange configuration. 

Suddenly, a wall of reflective shards appeared before them. Rhodes jumped, but Rogers just smiled and nodded. Stephen turned and beckoned them inside.

“This is the Mirror Dimension,” he told them as the gathered Avengers piled in after him, followed by Tony and the gauntlet. “Anything done here can’t be seen or affected by the world outside, and vice versa.”

“You couldn’t have just trapped Thanos in here?” Barnes asked, looking concernedly around him and absolutely not buying into Rogers’ grin.

“You don’t think I tried?” Stephen snarked right back. He continued with the explanation despite the distraction. “No one but those present knows that the gauntlet is going into the Mirror Dimension here, and even if they _did_ manage to find its location, there are an _extremely_ limited number of individuals in this galaxy that could even access the Mirror Dimension at all. Not to mention,” he said as Tony set the housing down in the equivalent of his own office, mirror shards reflecting all around them and catching Stephen’s candid smile, “a generous helping of difficult warding spells of my own, should worse come to worse.”

“Look,” Banner began, his eyes on their myriad reflections and taking them in with an appreciative eye. “I understand that we’ve got limited options when it comes to making sure no one else gets their hands on this thing, but I gotta say… No offense, but you just told us all the ways to make sure you’re the only one that can have access to the stones.”

“You _are_ asking us to take a big leap,” Romanoff noted. “Anyone who was there on Titan can vouch for you, but not everyone is gonna trust you outright, doctor.”

Stephen had expected resistance. But it was Tony that swelled up with indignation.

“He had direct contact with one of the stones _way_ before this whole thing even started,” Tony snapped, a finger pointing proudly at Stephen. “And he helped me figure out how to control the rest of them. If he’d wanted the damn gauntlet, he would’ve taken it off me while I was sleeping, or punched my lights out and stolen it the first time I showed up in his Sanctum. But he _didn’t_. All he’s ever done is try to help, so—” And Tony seemed to realize just how many of Stephen’s praises he’d been singing, and he faltered on his next words, stumbling through a new redness in his face. “So… so give him a break.”

Rhodes and Romanoff exchanged a look. And Stephen realized that there was something else that had happened on Titan that no one else was talking about. Because the people that had come to the final showdown with Thanos had heard Stephen’s stupid little confession, and there hadn’t been so much as a peep about it. They would vouch for him, but they were also keeping something secret for him.

Rogers smiled, seemed to read him so easily.

“Okay, Tony,” Rogers said. “If you say that we can trust him, I believe you. But I think if that’s the way we’re doing this, we’ve got to get him easier access to the compound in case something goes wrong with the stones.”

Tony clapped Stephen on the back, returned to his normal, overbearing self; beaming. “I guess that makes you an Avenger, Doctor Strange.”

+++

**PLAYBOY TONY STARK BREAKS OFF ENGAGEMENT!**

Stephen could have laughed, if he hadn’t felt the insistent churning of nervousness in his gut. Even after half of the world had been turned to dust and subsequently brought back to life, gossip magazines still scrounged through the depths for anything to drag through the mud.

He picked up the magazine, the cover splashed with gaudy color, other tasteless headlines, and grainy paparazzi photos.

One of which, he noted painfully, was a candid snap of Stephen himself leaving the Sanctum side-by-side with Tony Stark. The eye-catching title under the photo read: _Iron Man’s new fling! Juicy details inside!_

“No way,” came a voice breaking into Stephen’s reverie, and he looked up to see a large man in an ill-fitting suit barrelling toward him. “Nuh-uh. Not today, buddy. She doesn’t wanna see anyone, especially not _you_.”

Stephen was nearly thrown out of the waiting room by the head of security, and he honestly would have let the man. He was only doing his job. But a small voice from the edge of the room halted the progress of the man that looked very much like a charging bull.

“No, Happy, it’s okay,” Pepper Potts said. Her usually firm stature had slackened, and the well-hidden circles under her eyes were the only indication that anything was wrong. She wasn’t smiling, but neither had she fixed him with a glare of anger or hatred. 

“I’d be _glad_ to remove him from the property,” the head of security growled, looking absolutely threatening.

“I’ll let you know if I need anyone ejected,” Pepper said quietly, and she tried a smile for him. The movement looked unpracticed on her face, and she hid it by motioning Stephen into her office. 

Happy Hogan pointed two severe fingers at his own eyes, then harshly back in Stephen’s direction. The sorcerer nodded, and silently followed Pepper into her office.

She didn’t take a seat behind her desk, looking restless as she lingered by her nameplate—Pepper Potts, CEO, Stark Industries. Stephen closed the door behind him, and he stood just as awkwardly in the empty silence of the room.

Pepper finally turned to him, her pretty face downcast. “It’s Stephen, right?”

He nodded, tried to hide his shaking hands behind him. “Stephen Strange. I…” He caught himself on that pause, almost tripped over it, almost went charging back out the door. He’d faced down Thanos, flickered through millions of timelines, died thousands of times in the Dark Dimension. How was this more intimidating than all of that?

“I lied to you, Miss Potts,” he began simply.

She crossed her arms, didn’t say anything, and waited for him to elaborate.

“When we met in the park, I told you that he’d saved my life six years ago. While there’s probably some truth to that, I lied to hide the fact that I was already in love with him.”

Pepper’s mouth pressed into a tight, thin line, but she still didn’t say anything.

“I never expected him to—” Stephen cut himself off, hating everything about what he was saying, how he was saying it, how hard his heart was hammering in his chest. “I never meant for any of this to happen to you,” he said at last, and his voice felt miserably weak in his throat when he did.

Finally, something broke in Pepper’s practiced stoicism, and her face buckled into sadness on a dime. She tried to tamp it down with a smile, turning her head to look anywhere else. He caught the glimmer of tears in her eyes, and before he could reign himself back, he was three steps closer with a handkerchief. And, after just a moment, she accepted the offering.

“I’ve known Tony for a long time,” Pepper said at last, not meeting Stephen in the eye. “We had a lot of ups and downs in all that time, and I thought we’d finally figured it out. But—” Her voice hitched back into tears, and she professionally reigned them in. “But I think I was trying to take something that he couldn’t give up. I wanted Tony to just be _Tony_. I just wanted to have _him_ , but he’ll always be half Iron Man, and maybe—maybe he needs that. Needs someone who loves Tony and Iron Man both, and won’t ask him to be one or the other.”

She blew her nose, and looked sadly at the borrowed handkerchief. 

“I’m so sorry,” Stephen said, something hard in his throat.

“I am, too.” She smiled so sadly, wiping the tears from her cheeks.

+++

Wong had been graciously quiet since Stephen’s return to the Sanctum. While Stephen buried himself in the new set of books Wong had brought over from Kamar-Taj, Wong sat sewing the Cloak of Levitation back together with golden, shimmering thread (despite the object’s squirming).

There was a knock at the door to the Sanctum, and before either of them could rise to answer it, Tony Stark strolled through it and into the open lobby.

“Anyone home?” Tony asked loudly, announcing himself. 

Stephen’s chair squealed on the floor as he nearly tumbled out of it, and by the time he’d gathered himself, Tony was up the stairs and standing beside him—grinning up at him.

“What are you doing here?” Stephen asked—not rudely, simply taken by surprise.

Tony untied his tie, unbuttoned the first button of his shirt, smirked. “It’s time for our lesson, right?”

Stephen blinked oddly at him, and his eyes shot to the standing clock in the hall.

Ten-to-two.

By the time Stephen turned to face Tony again, there was something different on his face. Something halfway between laughter and tears, both of which he managed to keep inside somehow. Tony smiled knowingly, and for what felt like a very long time, they just let their gazes mingle.

“Well, I’ll leave you two to it,” Wong said, shaking his head with a smile. Before Stephen could raise any protestation, Wong held up a single hand. “If you need me, I’ll be at Kamar-Taj. I trust you won’t need me.”

Once they were alone, Stephen turned back to Tony—something like nervousness boiling just under his skin. It was the first time they’d been alone since everything had blown over, since they’d brought an end to the end of the universe. 

Tony must have noticed, because he took a step away, and he easily summoned one of his shields. Tossed it from hand to hand with a waggle of his eyebrows. It was enough to bring a chuckle out of Stephen’s mouth, and the tension eased slowly out of him.

They practiced for nearly forty minutes, introducing new gestures and practicing old ones. And by the end of the lesson, Tony could conjure his own rudimentary weapon to match Stephen’s sabre. It crashed against Stephen’s shield, a proud smile on the sorcerer's face as he knocked away blow after blow.

“I told you,” Stephen said, his shield dissipating. “You’d make a great sorcerer, Tony.”

“And quit my day job?” Tony asked, swinging his own weapon—glowing blue like his mandalas, more of a cutlass than a sabre—a few more times before shaking it into sparks, which vaporized in the air around him.

“Who says being Iron Man and a Master of the Mystic Arts are mutually exclusive?” Stephen asked, smirking. 

There was another long pause where neither of them said anything, and Stephen found that he wasn’t bothered by the silence. Neither was he bothered by the way Tony’s eyes fell on him, lingered, explored.

“I was thinking,” Tony said at last, having caught his breath, “now that things are calming down we should, y’know. Make it official.”

Stephen looked questioningly to him, eyebrows pressing down his forehead. Unsure exactly what Tony was proposing.

“Jeez, are you gonna say anything, or do I do all the talking now?” Tony strode forward until he was in Stephen’s space, directly in front of him—head tilted just slightly, his mouth a half-moon grin. “Boyfriends? You and me?”

Stephen’s mouth could barely move, despite him trying several times. He loved and hated that little satisfied look on Tony’s face. How it had completely robbed him of the ability to speak. Just a handful of words from that mouth, and Stephen Strange was utterly speechless.

So, uselessly, he nodded instead.

“Awesome,” Tony sighed (as if he hadn’t been completely sure of the answer he’d get). “So, this won’t be weird, then.”

Tony held on to the collar of Stephen’s robes and pulled him down against his mouth and finally, _finally_ kissed him.

Just something small and sweet, lingering for just a handful of seconds. And Stephen froze—everything seemed to still in him, especially his heart. His hands hovered awkwardly, not sure where they should be. Shaking.

Tony pulled back the instant Stephen froze, and his face was a picture of panic. 

“Wait, was that weird? I… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have just—”

Stephen grabbed Tony’s face in both of his hands and pulled him succinctly back into the kiss, harder and more insistent than before. Mashed them together like a pair of desperate teenagers, clawing to get a grip in the hair at the back of Tony’s head, anywhere he could get a solid grip—anything that would keep Tony’s mouth moving against his.

And Tony surrendered surprisingly easy, practically melting into his grip and pressing upward into that kiss. Opened his mouth and let Stephen in, looped his arms loosely around Stephen’s neck. Stephen could feel Tony smile against his own lips, and had to have more of it. Tony easily obliged, hummed something unintelligible that Stephen kissed away.

For a man that had held the time stone and looped himself through hundreds of deaths and millions of timelines, he lost track of time surprisingly easy while he was kissing Tony Stark. And he absolutely didn’t care, and just let himself be lost—in hungry, open-mouthed kisses; in the way Tony’s fingers gripped at his hips, his hair; the little noises Tony murmured into his mouth.

When Stephen pulled back—just barely, close enough that their lips still brushed with every breath, just enough to look at Tony this close—his breath felt too heavy in his chest. _Everything_ felt too heavy, too hot. But there was no hesitation now. There was hardly anything in him that wasn’t screaming _Tony_ in a hundred urgent voices.

“You should stay,” Stephen said, his voice desperately low.

“God, yes, finally,” Tony murmured, and his pupils were blown wonderfully wide, so close. “Enough of this will-they-won’t-they stuff—have you been _reading_ what they’re—”

Stephen clapped a hand over Tony’s mouth, stopped him talking. Their noses touching, right up in the same space and just staring at one another.

“Shut up, Tony,” was all he said. Dark and needy, his eyes fixed on Tony’s.

Tony nodded loosely, helplessly. And when Stephen dropped his hand away, they crashed back together.

+++

There was a trail of shoes and belts and one tie that led through the hall, all the way to the bedroom, where the two of them lay in a messy tangle of limbs and sheets.

Flat on his back in Stephen’s bed, Tony’s hard, ragged breath had barely had time to slow before Stephen was kissing him on the forehead, his neck, anywhere he could get his mouth. Tony laughed languidly, tried to get a hold on Stephen’s shoulder to shove him back.

“God, Stephen, no, I’m all sweaty and gross,” he chuckled uselessly.

Stephen ran a hand back through Tony’s hair, and it stuck straight up to make the same point—and the point that Stephen absolutely didn’t care. A line of quiet laughter came bubbling out of the sorcerer’s mouth, and Tony threw his arm over his eyes to hide from the softness of that look—still caught in his own spiral of laughter.

After they’d both managed to gather themselves, Tony dropped his arm back into the sheets, sighed through an immeasurable grin up at the man still propped up over him.

“Wow,” was all he said.

“Hm,” Stephen answered, kissing Tony’s sweaty brow again, and Tony’s eyes fluttered closed. “I’ll take _wow_.”

“I’ve got a couple other words, just gimme a second to remember what words are.”

After another comfortable silence, Tony opened his eyes again and found Stephen just _looking_ at him. And, for once in his life, Tony Stark looked _embarrassed_ —which only widened the smile on Stephen’s face.

“Okay, what?” Tony bit.

“I…” Stephen began, and then rethought his approach. The words in his chest all fought to fly out first, and he took his time to stamp them back down and pick the best ones. “I still can’t believe that the one timeline where you save the universe is the same one where you and I… that this is where it ended up.”

Tony laughed softly, his face dissolving into something entirely too sappy. “Well, yeah,” he replied, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

Stephen cocked his head in question—it didn’t seem that simple to _him_. So Tony leaned up on one elbow, closer to Stephen’s face. Still a bit red in the ears (from the embarrassment, but from a handful of other things, too).

“Stephen, it’s the whole reason I even got the time stone to work in the first place. It’s ‘cause I… well, I had to make sure you knew…”

There was a distant sound from the Sanctum, the sound of a voice carrying through the halls. Stephen’s head shot up, and Tony wriggled out from under him to sit fully up in the sheets. It wouldn’t be Wong, he wouldn’t go around shouting, since he’d apparently known exactly what was going to happen today and got out early. If it was someone attempting to attack the Sanctum, they likely wouldn’t have made themselves known so easily. Luckily, the answer presented itself.

“Mister Strange?” Peter Parker’s unmistakable voice ricocheted up the stairs at them.

“Oh no,” Stephen groaned, a weak laugh trapped somewhere in his chest.

“You gotta be kidding me,” Tony grumbled as he shoved himself off the bed. He gathered Stephen’s sheet up and wrapped it around his waist despite Stephen’s protestations.

“Tony,” Stephen dissolved into helpless laughter. “Don’t traumatize him.”

“He keeps barging into places, he’s gonna traumatize himself eventually.” Tony opened Stephen’s bedroom door and leaned out into the hall. “The wizard you’re looking for is busy at the moment, leave your message at the beep!” he shouted.

Somewhere in the Sanctum, there was a surprised yell, followed the sound of something crashing to the floor. Stephen held his face in his hand, shook his head, and got up to get dressed.

They found Peter crouched over a broken teapot—thankfully a normal teapot and not one of the enchanted ones—trying to pick up the pieces.

“Peter Parker,” Tony snapped, and Peter hopped to attention like he’d been struck. There was a panicked look in his eyes, which leapt from Stephen—in sweats, for God’s sake—to Tony—clearly not wearing his own clothes. “Didn’t your aunt teach you to _knock_?”

“Oh jeez,” Peter grimaced. “I’m really sorry, I didn’t… This is _super_ awkward, can I just go and try to forget everything I’m seeing right now?”

“What did you want, Peter?” Stephen asked, and with a single motion, he’d repaired the teapot the boy had smashed.

“Literally nothing,” Peter protested, trying his best to focus on some point far over Tony’s head. “I just—I wanted to check in—with all the stuff they’re saying about you and—”

“What, like in the _Bugle_?” Tony laughed, crossing his arms.

“You’re not taking gossip seriously, are you?” Stephen added.

“Well, uh, it’s not really gossip if it’s true, right?” Peter asked, and he deigned to meet them in the eye for one moment before he decided that it was still too embarrassing. “Okay, yep. Have fun—er, don’t—ugh.” And Peter hitched his backpack up on his shoulder and turned away hastily, leaving through the front door like he was being chased.

And he left a silence behind that was only broken when Tony burst into loud, bright laughter. 

Stephen folded his arms, and he just savored it. The laugh he’d tried so hard to memorize on Titan—sure that he had been about to die for this man. Tony caught Stephen staring, but for once he didn’t balk. His laugh settled, and every part of him relaxed under Stephen’s eye. _God,_ he loved the way Tony’s smile worked its slow way across his face when he looked up at him. Just took its time while Tony searched Stephen’s face like he was memorizing it.

“So,” Stephen began from their comfortable silence, grinning down at Tony, “what were you saying? Before we were interrupted?”

“Hm? No idea what you’re talking about, Doc,” Tony answered, sidling closer. “I think I remember having a lot less clothes on, though. We should probably do something about that.”

“Really?” Stephen wondered how long Tony was going to be able to make him blush so easily. “Maybe a man of your age ought to try to take it slow.”

“ _Man of my age_ ,” Tony scoffed, grabbing Stephen by the hips and hitching them closer. “Y’know, they say with age comes experience.”

“I think it’s ‘with age comes wisdom’,” Stephen managed to say.

“Eh, I can work with that,” Tony mumbled, and pulled Stephen back in for another hard kiss.

+++

A scream caught in Stephen’s throat, and he bolted awake like he’d been stabbed in the gut. His hands grabbed the sheets, dug in just to anchor himself—feel something real, keep him grounded. His heart was working entirely too fast, and he was sure he was going to throw up this time. Stephen’s shaking breath came rushing out of him, too harsh, too fast.

And then, there was a hand on his chest, fingers in his hair, that brought him slamming back to reality. His scared, blurred vision focused on the frightened face hovering over him—mouth moving before Stephen realized what the voice was saying.

“Hey, hey,” Tony said calmingly, smoothing a hand back through Stephen’s hair. “Stephen, I’m—breathe, okay?”

Stephen’s vision blurred out again, this time with unbidden, hot tears. But he breathed through them. Five seconds in… 

Tony counted silently with him, breathing synched. Wiped Stephen’s face clear of tears.

“You’re still here,” Stephen said finally.

Tony’s calm broke, and he fixed Stephen with a little odd glance. “Yeah, of course I am.”

The tears didn’t stop when an aching smile broke over Stephen’s face, and only got worse when Tony grabbed him in a tight embrace. He didn’t break into histrionic sobs or theatrical weeping. Just buried his face in Tony’s shoulder, tried to steady his breath as Tony worked his hands through Stephen’s hair. Quiet, intimate; calming.

“You need to talk about it?” Tony asked.

At first, Stephen shook his head. But then he opened his mouth, and it all came spilling out of him.

“I saw you die,” he said, and his voice was already rubbed raw. “I saw you die _so many times_. I lived through it, each one of them was _real_.” Something stuck in his throat, and he fought past it. “I had your blood on my hands millions of times over—I saw your body break—I heard you scream for your mother—”

Stephen’s voice broke too hard to continue, and he squeezed his eyes shut to hide even further in Tony’s shoulder.

“Oh, so…” Tony’s voice fell into something serious, something sad. His warm hand lingered on the back of Stephen’s neck. “That’s what you meant by…”

“Still here,” Stephen finished for him, and he took a shuddering breath as a staccato end to his tears. 

“Well,” Tony said after what felt like eons, “don’t worry. I’m not gonna let _you_ be alone, either, Doc.”

Stephen laughed helplessly, and he pulled away just far enough to find Tony’s eyes. Tony smiled, shrugged—as if to say ‘I hope that was encouraging.’ Stephen nodded listlessly.

“Because I—” Tony cut back in, apparently not done with his thought. Or at least, some part of him hadn’t been finished, because his mouth hadn’t quite caught up. Tony verbally stumbled, tried to gather himself. And Stephen waited; didn’t push, or even move.

“I had to make sure you knew,” Tony continued a conversation long ended. “That I—yeah. I think it’s possible.”

Stephen knew precisely what he meant. But he still wanted to hear it. “What’s possible?”

Tony deflated, just slightly—he knew exactly what Stephen was doing. But he smiled through it, matching the one growing on Stephen’s face.

“Maybe,” Tony said with some effort, “there _is_ some timeline where we fall in love. I dunno, maybe it’s even this one.”

“I guess we’ll find out,” Stephen said, his grin absolutely shining.

“In the morning,” Tony suggested. “After coffee. And breakfast. Do wizards do breakfast?”

“Brunch,” Stephen amended, and he pulled Tony back down into the bed with him, kissing him soundly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe it's over. I also can't believe this is almost NaNovel length. I think I can finally admit that this was basically all based on a dream I had where Stephen was teaching Tony how to use the time stone, and it all got quickly out of hand. It's hard to believe I got such wonderful encouragement for something that was so fun to write.
> 
> So there may be a bit of sequel baiting planted here with the stones still kinda in the mix, but I'll just say that I don't have any solid ideas yet. But I feel like I might have more Marvel fics in me in the future, and I won't hesitate to post 'em here if I do. You guys have all been wonderful, it's been so great to hear your feedback and interact with the folks who have found me on tumblr (I'm shoelessone by the way if you swing by, I'd definitely have future fic updates there).
> 
> THANK YOU, so much again! <3333


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